


Things Left Unsaid

by Adanie_Josaeh



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Because I don't believe it, Because that seems pretty important, Buns in the oven, Conversations, Don't trust me to stick to tv show canon because I suck at it apparently, Don't try to tell me these two didn't talk about shit, F/M, I don't know where this even came from, Mostly show canon, Scenes we were robbed of, Sister talk, Some book canon, Somehow this has a slight plot now?, Sorry Not Sorry, Sort Of, Things that shoud've been said but weren't, We aren't ignoring the fact that Gendry is also part Targaryen, both Stark girls are busted, season 8 fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2020-10-05 03:02:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 59,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20481767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adanie_Josaeh/pseuds/Adanie_Josaeh
Summary: "Silly man.  Is it not obvious?  You are now husband to the Queen in the North.”“Seven hells,” he groaned, and collapsed back on the bed. “How did I get myself into this?”Sansa lay back down, snuggling against him. “If I remember correctly, I tricked you into it, ser.”“Aye, you did,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice, only amusement and maybe wonder. “Suppose you get everything you want then?  A kingdom and a dog?”She slapped at his chest. “I get everything I want, it’s true.  Northern independence, my remaining brothers and sister alive and safe, and the man I love in my bed.  Maybe the Gods blessed me after all.”





	1. Arya I

**Author's Note:**

> I have 100% no idea where this came from. I was literally just driving around yesterday, making up conversations in my head that I thought should have happened on the show. Then I started writing them down. Now there's this. This isn't going to be a normal story with any kind of plot- it's just what the title says- things left unsaid on the show that I'm filling in. It's going to be a little series of scenes and conversations between characters that kind of fill in the gaps. The first is Arya and Sansa talking about their history with the Hound.
> 
> A few important notes...
> 
> This is MOSTLY show canon, which is not something I'd normally do. I'm pretty faithful to the books, but for the purpose of this story, it will mostly follow the show. The exceptions being...
> 
> 1) Battle of the Blackwater scene is book canon. It always will be for me. I will never write a story using the show version because there was way too much shit left out. Sansa remembers a kiss happening (that didn't happen) and that's important to me. SO, any part of this story that addresses that scene will be book compliant.
> 
> 2) Just assume that ALL Sansa/Sandor book scenes that took place are canon here. The show left out way too much of their relationship and I'm putting my foot down on it! The only scene that will follow the show between them instead of the book is the Bread Riot scene. I just think it was more dramatic that the Hound actually went looking for her down an alley and gutted a man for her. So that scene from the tv show is canon here.
> 
> 3) Arya and Gendry's history is going to be more complicated...they're parting in the tv show is going to be the same, not because I like it better, but it's so important to the tv characters that I just went with it... HOWEVER, Acorn Hall definitely happened here. Just shove that somewhere in the timeline of the tv show because there's no way that didn't happen for me. Think it's safe to say all of their book canon is the same, except Melisandre DOES take Gendry before the Hound gets to Arya here. In this story, I'm going to play with how Arya felt about thinking Gendry was dead, therefore, Arya had to witness Melisandra taking him.
> 
> 4) Most complicated one is the scene where the Hound and Arya gets in that fight at the inn. I'm going mostly book canon on this. So Sandor found out about Sansa marrying Tyrion, got shitfaced, then nearly got himself killed. HOWEVER, I like the Hound and Brienne fight scene, so we're just going to pretend that he didn't fall off his horse to die beneath a tree, but rode on to the Vale, found out Lysa was dead, then met with Brienne like in the show. His wounded leg weakened him against his fight with Brienne, and she knocked his ass off a cliff.
> 
> So basically, this is a little AU since it's featuring book and show canon and mixing the two. I hope I don't make any huge continuity errors because of this, but if I do, I'll try to fix it later. This is not at all edited because I just had to write it down. It's as much for my own therapy as it is for entertainment, but I hope y'all enjoy it!

-Arya-

Sansa was in the solar, shuffling through her ever-growing stack of parchment notation supply inventory, correspondences with Northern lords who had yet to report to Winterfell, and other such documents, when Arya strolled in quietly. Arya studied her sister, noting the small line that had formed between her brows as she looked over her work. 

Sansa, of course, had not noticed her presence. Arya moved through Winterfell like a ghost, and because Sansa had left her solar door open, Arya stood watching her, waiting for her sister to look up. Sansa dropped into the seat and put her head in her hands, still staring down at some business on those parchments that was beyond Arya’s understanding.

“Lady Stark,” Arya finally said. Sansa startled in her seat and jerked her head up.

She sighed heavily. “Arya,” she breathed out. “You’re quieter than a cat.”

Arya smirked at her sister before crossing the room and dropping into the chair across from her. “Working hard, sister?”

Sansa rolled her eyes in a most unladylike way and shoved at the parchment in front of her. “No matter which way I look at it, there is not enough food for all the mouths I have to feed. Now Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons are eating what extra meat we may have been able to hunt. I imagine you’re tired of hearing me complain about our savior,” Sansa’s pretty mouth curled into a snarl and the way she said the word savior, full of sarcasm that she did not often display, left no room for confusion as to what she felt about the dragon queen.

Arya had no comforting words for her sister and was glad she wasn’t in her position. She said nothing, but studied Sansa’s pretty face, so often bearing a look of consternation these days. Sansa met her eyes and her expression changed, now one of curiosity.

“I have heard that you’ve been frequenting the forge these last few days,” Sansa said, and Arya made sure to keep her expression guarded.

“I’m a warrior,” Arya said dismissively. “Is it not pertinent for a warrior to inspect the quality of weapons?”

Sansa nodded. “You’re replacing your Needle then?”

Arya shook her head. “Not at all. It’s small, but it’s well-suited for me. I need a weapon that will kill wights though. Needle _isn’t_ suited for that task. I’m having a custom weapon made.”

Sansa nodded again, seemingly dropping the subject. She must not have known that Arya was well-acquainted with one the blacksmiths. Something made Arya want to tell her. They had not been close as children and, as much as Arya had lost when her childhood was severed, there was still a strange desire to open up to her sister now that they understood one another better.

There were a few moments of quiet as Arya tried to think of a way to converse with her sister, while Sansa resumed looking over her documents. Then, it came to her suddenly that she had run into someone else while in the forge, someone they had a shared history with.

“Ran into the Hound down at the forge,” Arya said nonchalantly, watching Sansa’s face carefully.

And there it was. Her eyes that had been moving along the lines of important report or another stopped abruptly, and Arya watched Sansa’s throat move as she swallowed. Those ice blue eyes glanced up only briefly before returning to the parchment.

“Oh?” Sansa said, her eyes now fixed on a spot on her document.

“Same old pain in the arse,” Arya commented.

Sansa met her eyes then and Arya could see she was fighting to stay disinterested when she was anything but. “I imagine he sees you as the same.”

Arya cocked her head to the side. “Why would you assume I’m a pain in his arse?”

One side of Sansa’s mouth quirked into a smirk. “Because you’re a pain in everyone’s…erm…behind.”

Arya snorted and shook her head. “You know that I traveled with him?”

Arya had her interest now, she could tell. Sansa abandoned the pretense of studying her parchment and pushed the stack of documents aside. “I heard. Brienne told me some time ago. She mentioned that you wouldn’t leave him.” One finely manicured brow rose in interest as Sansa added, “If he was such a pain, why would you stay with him?”

“I didn’t,” Arya argued. “I didn’t want to go with _her_. She had Lannister gold at her hip. She nearly killed him, did you know?”

The corners of Sansa’s pretty mouth turned down at that. “She didn’t tell me that.”

Arya lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Likely thought you wouldn’t care.”

“What did she do to him?” Sansa had apparently decided she was tired of pretending she wasn’t interested, so Arya gladly told her of what transpired in as few words as possible. She told her of their travels, how she had wanted to kill the bastard, how he had protected her in spite of that, and how Brienne and the Hound had fought viciously. She told Sansa that Brienne likely only had an advantage because the Hound was burning up with fever from a previous injury. She told her of his tumble down a mountainside and how she had left him there.

The look on Sansa’s face was stern and cold. Oddly enough, Sansa had never looked more like their father than she did just then, looking on her sister disapprovingly. 

“You repaid his protection by leaving him to die at the foot of a mountain?”

Arya tried not to smirk at her sister’s interest in the topic, but she found herself oddly fascinated by this turn of events. “He was a former Lannister guard. He killed Mycah. I was little more than his prisoner.” None of what she said changed Sansa’s expression, so she added, “I didn’t kill him.”

“No, somehow he survived in spite of you,” Sansa said.

Arya leaned forward in her chair, elbows on her thighs. “Are you angry, sister?”

Sansa blinked and attempted to clear her face of the scowl, albeit unsuccessfully. “No,” she insisted. “I just don’t think your method is a proper way to repay the kindness of keeping you alive.”

“He was going to ransom me,” Arya said flatly.

“He could have ransomed you to the Lannisters, but he didn’t,” Sansa argued back.

Arya felt her lips twitch, but she managed to keep the smirk off her face. “Lady Stark,” she teased her sister, “How well do you know the Hound?”

“Better than you,” she muttered.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Arya couldn’t stop herself now and she was surprised that for the first time in a very long time, she was enjoying being mischievous. She had thought she had left that behind in her mangled childhood, but t was refreshing to rediscover the pleasure it brought her.

Those ice blue eyes met hers again, but this time she seemed startled. Arya thought that perhaps Sansa had meant to better guard her words.

“I traveled with him for quite a while,” Arya explained. “Bastard would roll me tightly into a bedroll to the point I could not move to keep me from murdering him in his sleep.” She sniffed. “Seemed awful cautious to be such a big brute traveling with such a small girl.”

“I doubt he ever dealt with any little girls quite like yourself,” Sansa commented.

“No,” Arya mused, “Likely dealt more with proper little ladies who would never dream of sticking a sword through his eye.”

Now it was Sansa’s turn to lean forward, elbows propped on her desk as she studied Arya. “I doubt he was around _any _little girls, save for yourself.”

Arya rolled her eyes at that. She knew better. She’d heard Sansa’s name on his lips as he slept, and though she had no idea what had transpired between the two of them in King’s Landing, she knew _something_ had to have happened. The Hound’s reaction to her marriage to Tyrion Lannister had nearly got him killed.

“Did the two of you never interact during your time in King’s Landing?” Arya asked as innocently as possible.

“Of course we did,” Sansa said. “He was Joffrey’s sworn shield.”

“One would think that you wouldn’t be so disappointed in me leaving him for dead, considering your prior knowledge of him.”

Sansa’s gaze dropped then, her eyes staring at some point on the desk. Arya was not in a hurry, so she waited for Sansa to say something. Her sister took a deep breath and said, “Sandor Clegane was not…_terrible_ to me.”

Arya squinted at her, unsure what to make of the statement. “From what you’ve told me before, Tyrion Lannister was not _terrible_ to you either.”

Sansa nodded. “That’s true enough. Tyrion is a good man, I believe.” 

“Yet you left Tyrion to take the fall for Joffrey’s murder.”

Frustrated, Sansa gave her sister a glare. “I didn’t murder Joffrey. You know that.”

“Blame was placed on your husband and that hardly seems to bother you,” Arya remarked. “Would you not agree, dear sister of mine, that leaving Tyrion Lannister to take the full blame for a murder he did not commit is quite similar to leaving a dying man on a mountainside?”

“No,” Sansa answered sharply. “It is not the same.”

“And why not? You left Tyrion to take the blame while you ran for your life, no? I left the Hound to his own fate so that I could escape as well. It’s not as though I could have carried his massive arse.”

Sansa seemed at a loss for words at that and Arya once again fought the urge to smirk cheekily at her sister. This conversation had started with Arya contemplating opening up about Gendry, but had turned toward a much more interesting subject, one Arya was determined to get to the bottom of.

Sansa was quiet for so long that Arya decided to prod some more. “He wasn’t terrible, you say? That seems at odds with his demeanor.”

Arya felt triumphant at the slight defeated look that crossed Sansa’s features. She raised her brows in interest when Sansa met her eyes again and gave her a quick nod, an indication that she was waiting for Sansa to answer.

“He was awful, at times,” Sansa said finally. “But not because he mistreated me. He spoke to me roughly, but I see now that he was only trying to open my eyes. Unfortunately, my eyes were opened a bit too late to stop some of the things I have experienced since then.” The dark look painted on Sansa’s features made Arya feel momentarily murderous as she thought about what Sansa had been subjected to, first by Joffrey, then Littlefinger, and then Ramsay. She was glad that they were all dead, but a bit sad she had no hand in Joffrey’s and Ramsay’s end. Littlefinger’s, at least, had been satisfying.

“He was the only Kingsguard that never struck me,” Sansa continued. “All of the others hit me on command. He was only commanded to once that I know of, but he didn’t do it. He even stood up to Joffrey once, told him that it was enough. He covered me with his cloak when I was stripped naked at Joffrey’s command. He saved me from being ravaged by an angry mob,” Sansa paused a moment and Arya thought she saw unshed tears shining in her sister’s eyes, but Sansa blinked them away before they could fall. “He scared me though. I was so scared of him,” when Arya made to give an answer to that, Sansa rushed on, “But not because of his scars! I thought they were terrible, yes, but much later on I realized that it was his anger and hatred that frightened me. There was so much rage inside him and _that _is what terrified me. When he left though, I felt…lost.”

Arya had so many questions. She wondered what Clegane had said to Sansa to make her fear his rage. Arya didn’t remember ever being truly scared of the Hound. She had mostly been irritated at him. But Arya had felt her fair share of uncontrollable rage, and she supposed that she didn’t fear the Hound’s rage because, maybe more than anyone, she understood it. Sansa, having never been an angry person, likely couldn’t relate to the anger that swelled inside the Hound, always threatening to burst forth in the form of violence.

“You felt lost?” Arya said finally, confused by the statement.

Sansa nodded. “When he was there, I felt stronger somehow. I almost felt…safe? Perhaps I didn’t feel safe exactly. But I realized later that he was trying to guide me in the only way he knew how. He told me that the world was awful, and that he was only a product of that.”

“So the two of you were, what, friends?”

Sansa shook her head and chewed on her lip, a habit that amused Arya to no end as lip-chewing had always been _her_ bad habit, and somewhere along the way, Sansa had picked it up as well.

“No, not friends,” Sansa said, almost sadly. “I was nothing but an annoyance to him. Now I see that’s why he’s a better man than I gave him credit for. He _hated_ me. Yet he still looked after me, in his own way.”

Arya wanted to tell her that she highly doubted that the Hound hated her. She could hear Sansa’s name in the dark of night, leaving the Hound’s lips like a prayer, just as clearly as if he was standing in the room with her now. Arya had never addressed it with him. She had had so much hate of her own for him back then that she didn’t want to think about why he was dreaming of her sister. What the both of them thought to be his dying words had revealed a bit more to Arya.

_“And the little bird, your pretty sister. I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it. I meant to take her too. I should have. I should have fucked her bloody and ripped her heart out before leaving her for the dwarf.”_

It had been a long time, but Arya remembered it with clarity. Many moons later, she would lay awake at night and hear those words and ponder over them. The Hound hated knights, so why had he agonized over watching Sansa beaten while in his Kingsguard garb? What had he meant when he had mentioned taking a song? Why did it matter to him that Sansa had married the Imp?

But now, things slid into place a bit more. Some instinct told Arya that Clegane and her sister had been more than acquaintances, but she didn’t know _how _she knew it. Sansa hadn’t given her much to go on. Clegane may have given her only a bit more, but the clues were still too convoluted to follow clearly.

Lost in her thoughts, Arya realized that Sansa was studying her with a similar curiosity. She seemed as though she wanted to ask Arya something, but much like Arya didn’t know how to put a voice to her questions. Arya made her decision then. It was long past time that the two of them acted like sisters.

“I have a friend that works in the forge,” Arya offered as dispassionately as she could. She watched Sansa to gauge her reaction.

Sansa didn’t seem surprised at this. She simply nodded. “You always made friends wherever you went when you were a girl,” Sansa said. “Honestly, I didn’t know if you still had the capacity to do it after….after everything you’ve been through.”

Arya frowned. “I don’t know if I do. He’s an old friend truly. I haven’t made any new friends in a very long time.”

_That _piqued Sansa’s interest. If possible, she leaned forward on the desk even more, her eyes searching Arya’s face. “An old friend? I wasn’t aware that you knew any of the new blacksmiths. When did that come about?”

Arya felt the corner of her mouth curve in a smile, which always seemed to happen when she thought of Gendry. “Someone else I traveled with, before I traveled with the Hound. He and I went through all Seven Hells together and then…” Though Arya had been practiced at hiding her emotions for years now, the familiar ache of watching that witch ride off with her friend washed over her, quickly followed by anger. “We were separated. I thought he’d died, but then he rode into Winterfell with Jon and Daenerys Targaryen.”

Arya looked up to find Sansa wearing a look of understanding, though Arya had no idea how she could understand the relief and confusion and swirling storm of emotions that came with seeing someone you thought dead to be alive and well.

“Who is he?” Sansa asked quietly.

“His name is Gendry,” Arya said. “Other than that, he’s no one.” She was amused at the irony of using that moniker to describe Gendry. It was an identity of sorts that she had adopted for her own, and truly, Gendry wasn’t _no one_, but she supposed to Sansa, this was the best description of Gendry. If he wasn’t a lord or a warrior, Sansa wasn’t likely to have paid any attention to him.

But her sister’s head was cocked to the side in interest and Arya narrowed her eyes, curious about what was about to come out of her sister’s mouth.

Sansa gave her a smirk. “Am I wrong to assume that he’s the young handsome one? Strong jaw, black hair, blue eyes?”

Arya, being well-trained at not showing emotions, resisted the urge to let her jaw drop. She asked instead, “You know him?”

Sansa shook her head. “I don’t know him. But as Lady of Winterfell, I have visited the forge to oversee the inventory of weapons on occasion, and there’s only one that I’ve noticed.”

Something about Sansa _noticing_ Gendry rankled, but she pushed that feeling down. “Black hair, blue eyes, aye,” Arya said quickly. “I don’t know about _handsome_…”

Sansa snorted and sat back in her chair, covered her mouth with a hand. Her eyes were lit with amusement and Arya wondered at how quickly she’d lost the upper hand, not to mention how unladylike and how terribly uncharacteristic it was to hear Sansa _snort_.

“Something funny?” A deep voice from the door caused the both of them to turn. 

Jon stood just inside the solar, wearing his fine black cloak and a small smile. Both girls shook their heads and composed themselves.

“Not for my ears then?” Jon guessed.

“I was just leaving,” Arya said, hopping up from her chair and heading to the door. She sensed Jon probably had business with Sansa, and as any politics was outside of her comfort zone, she decided not to hang around.

Sansa motioned for Jon to come in and Arya closed the door behind her. 

_Think I’ll check on the progress of that weapon of mine_, she thought as she headed toward the forge.


	2. Sansa I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa has some words with Brienne, and some more with Arya.

-Sansa-

Sansa watched her brother leave her solar, exhausted from another heated conversation. He had brought her news of the arrival of Ser Jaime Lannister. Sansa dug her heels in on the matter. Lannisters weren’t to be trusted, other than perhaps Tyrion, and even that was questionable considering his current company. Jon had given her the same speech about needing every able-bodied person, arguing that past differences should be put aside. She saw his point, she truly did, but the two of them had found it difficult to speak to one another without it becoming emotional and biased.

_That’s the only conversations we ever have anymore,_ she thought a little sadly. Jaime Lannister was just one more thing to disagree on. More often than not, it was Daenerys.

Sansa couldn’t help but be angry with him. She didn’t think that Daenerys Targaryen was intentionally playing her brother, but she was playing him all the same. Perhaps they were in love, but Sansa had hoped that Jon would be smarter than to fall in love at a time like this. Everyone needed clear minds and straight-forward goals, the most important of which was surviving the Long Night. Yet Daenerys was more worried about securing her hold on Westeros and ensuring that the North was under her thumb.

It seemed to Sansa that a lesson she learned hard was one that Jon had not yet mastered. A love like the songs didn’t exist. All that was at the end of that road was tragedy and heartache. She had no desire to see her brother’s heart crushed, but she had more important problems to deal with. Like feeding more mouths than she had food for.

Last Hearth had fallen, so they had been able to salvage many supplies from the abandoned castle. The lack of help from the South was hurting them greatly. While Jon might believe that Cersei Lannister would send help and supplies, Sansa knew better. She didn’t believe for a moment that Cersei would hold to her word. There had been no word from their scouts that there was any significant movement along the Kingsroad since all of Daenerys’s army had arrived. If Cersei were sending help, an army would have been spotted by now. As it was, there had been no reports of any aid coming.

A knock sounded at the wooden door of her solar and she called to her visitor to enter. The door swung open to reveal Brienne, who had evidently encountered Jon in the hallway judging from the anxious expression she wore.

“It is time for the evening meal, my lady,” she said. “I’m here to escort you.”

Sansa had told Brienne that she had no need of escort inside Winterfell, but her sworn shield insisted on it anyway. Sansa stood from her chair and smoothed her skirts. She knew if she told Brienne she wasn’t hungry that it would only worry her. She thought perhaps she would tell her that she would take her meal in her solar, but Brienne would object to this as well, arguing that she needed to get away from her work awhile.

Brienne waited for her as she crossed into the hallway and closed the door to her solar. The recent conversation with Jon fled her mind as she remembered her conversation with Arya.

“Brienne,” she said cautiously, peaking over her shoulder at the lady knight. She slowed down to let Brienne catch up to her so that they could walk side by side. Thankfully, Brienne got the hint and moved to her left side. “I have been wanting to ask you about what you told me some time ago…about Arya traveling with Sandor Clegane.”

Brienne stiffened at the mention of his name and nodded tersely. “What would you ask, my lady?”

Sansa wanted to approach this carefully. She didn’t want it to come across that she was _mad_ at Brienne for injuring Sandor. “Arya mentioned recently that the two of you fought one another. I was just wondering how the fight came about?”

Brienne’s bright blue eyes cut to Sansa’s face before looking back down the long corridor they were walking. “Clegane was in possession of your sister, as I said. I had heard that he was dangerous. A Clegane with a young girl like that…”

Sansa bristled and struggled to keep the anger out of her voice. “You assumed he had done something to her?” Sansa turned her face to look at Brienne, who now looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to worry you, my lady. Lady Arya has since confirmed she was unharmed. I only meant to protect her.”

“Remember when you first told me that you had seen her? The first time, you didn’t mention that she was with Clegane. It wasn’t until later that I found out. Why didn’t you mention it the first time?”

They were walking downstairs now, so Sansa looked over her shoulder again to catch a glimpse at Brienne’s face. She seemed confused that this would concern Sansa now.

“I did not want to worry you, my lady. I thought that perhaps you would fear for your sister if you had known who she was traveling with,” Brienne answered.

As the stairs opened into another corridor, Sansa said, “On the contrary, Brienne, it may have made me feel that she was safer.”

“He has behaved himself so far, my lady, it’s just that the things I’ve heard about the Cleganes…”

“…Are mostly untrue where _Sandor_ is concerned.” The finality of her tone left no more room for argument. She wouldn’t tolerate any untrue filth about Sandor.

“My lady, there is something I would discuss with you as well,” Brienne said, pausing outside the entrance to the great hall.

Sansa turned around to face her, “Is there something the matter, Brienne?”

“I heard that Ser Jaime Lannister rode into the courtyard this afternoon,” she said.

Sansa tried to keep her face neutral as she nodded. She was aware that Brienne had some kind of history with the Kingslayer, though the details had not been discussed between the two women in detail. “He rode in alone,” Sansa said, “He came without an army. We plan to address him publicly tomorrow morning.”

“By address him, does that mean…is he to face a trial?”

Sansa’s brow furrowed as she studied the worry written on Brienne’s face. “I do not know. He’s committed enough atrocities to face a trail, certainly, but I do not know Jon’s intention. He hasn’t been sharing his plans with me. Even if everything else about the Kingslayer…”

“Jaime, my lady,” Brienne interrupted uncharacteristically. “His name is Ser Jaime, my lady.”

Sansa nodded before continuing, “If everything else he has done is forgiven, the fact remains that he has still come to us without an army, without any true aid. What are we to do with one aging knight who lost his sword hand?”

Brienne flinched a bit at the statement, but didn’t look away. “My lady, I will tell you, as I plan to tell everyone tomorrow, that Ser Jaime is invaluable. He came to help and you should let him. He’s not the same man he was a few years ago. More than that, he was perhaps never the man that his reputation would have you believe. I know him. He isn’t a monster,” Brienne asserted in earnest.

“That may be so, Brienne. And I would ask of you the same you’re asking of me when it comes to Sandor Clegane. Don’t see him for the monster everyone else has made him out to be or for the reputation that precedes him because of his brother. See him for the man he is.”

Sansa didn’t wait for Brienne to comment on that, but entered the great hall. It was filled with people from all over. She saw familiar Northern faces, faces of knights she had met in the Vale, she saw a few of the Unsullied sitting together near the front of the hall, which was unusual for them as they usually kept to themselves outside Winterfell’s walls. Her eyes finally landed on her target.

He sat at the back of the hall, Arya’s handsome blacksmith friend at his side, chatting to him while Sandor all but ignored him. A large part of her wanted to approach him. She remembered her conversation with Arya earlier and how she had mentioned that she thought her blacksmith friend had died. Well, Sansa thought Sandor had died as well. There had been reports that he had been killed and Littlefinger had readily shared them with her. The overwhelming crushed feeling she had felt in her chest at the news had surprised her.

She knew what Arya must have felt when a man she thought dead rode through the gates of Winterfell because Sansa had experienced the same phenomenon. She had done a double take when she saw the huge, scarred warrior sitting astride his hellish mount. She had been at war with herself since his arrival, torn between approaching him and staying away. She was not scared of him hurting her and had never truly feared him in that way. But she was afraid that he would hate her, and after discovering some things about herself and how he made her feel, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to face his hatred.

_How can I want to be around someone so much who hates me?_

Sansa took her seat next to Jon and quietly greeted Daenerys, who sat on his other side. She was quiet throughout the meal and her eyes kept finding Sandor, though he never looked toward her. The big, red-haired wildling sat on his other side at some point and was talking to him as cheerfully as Gendry had been. Sansa felt a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. As grouchy and hateful as Sandor tried to come off, there were still people other than herself who could see past that mean shell and it amused her.

“Sansa,” Jon’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts, and she turned to her brother, her smile dropping from her lips.

There was a spark of mirth in his eyes and he was fighting his own smile as he gave her a knowing look. She let her cool, calm mask slip into place as she looked at him expectantly.

Evidently, Jon was better at seeing past her own hard shell. He shook his head minutely as though to indicate that he wasn’t buying what she was selling, then his eyes flickered away for a moment. Sansa followed them and her own landed back on Sandor. She looked back at her brother, whose brows were raised in question.

“What?” She hissed.

“Do you know him?” Jon asked quietly.

“Of course I know him,” Sansa replied shortly. “Everyone knows him.”

She turned her attention back to her half-eaten meal, but she could feel Jon’s eyes on her.

“I just want to know,” he continued on, his voice loud enough only for her to hear as Daenerys was otherwise engaged, “if what you’re remembering is good or bad. I won’t have someone in my service who has wronged you, Sansa.”

His statement softened her a little and she turned back to him. “He never hurt me. He helped during my time in King’s Landing. That’s all I want to say about it.

Jon looked at her a moment longer, then nodded and turned his attention back to his plate.

Sansa was ready to leave and quietly excused herself. She somehow managed to escape Brienne’s notice, as her shield knew that she normally stayed for the duration of the meal and took the time to enjoy walking by herself through the corridors. She had a wild thought that maybe she would accidentally run into him. She finally climbed the stairs back to her solar and had opened the door when Arya appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Sansa startled, making Arya smirk at her. She glared at her little sister, who walked in after her.

“Back so soon, Arya?” Sansa said to her. “I didn’t see you at the meal.”

“I ate in the kitchens. I was having a talk with the cook.”

Of course she was. “I’m surprised you weren’t sitting with your blacksmith.”

It was Sansa’s turn to smirk as she seated herself by the fireplace, enjoying Arya’s scowl.

“He’s not _my_ blacksmith,” Arya said. 

“He’s even more handsome than I thought,” Sansa teased. “I’ve really only seen him passing, but tonight I decided to have a better look. Good on you, little sister.”

Sansa was only able to bask in her little game for a few seconds as Arya’s face changed from a scowl to a wide smile. Sansa’s faded.

“What?” She asked as Arya’s quirked a brow at her.

“Oh, nothing, Lady Stark,” she said serenely. “Nothing at all…only that I know who Gendry sits with at meals and why your attention was already turned to that particular table.”

Heat rushed to Sansa’s cheeks and ears. Her mouth popped open to deny it, or to demand what Arya was talking about, but she closed it again; she knew it was futile. There was no point in arguing the matter. She gave her sister a cool look.

Arya batted her eyelashes, “Is the Hound even more handsome than you thought as well?”

Sansa had the sudden urge to throw something at her sister’s stupid face, but that was something that Arya would have done, so she refrained. “I have work to do, Arya. Close the door on your way out.”

Arya obliged, snickering the whole way out the door.

Sansa could still hear her after the door closed as she moved through the hall.

_Insufferable little shit_.


	3. Sandor I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor finds a quiet spot to think about his death and is interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of these chapters are going to contain dialogue directly from the show. This is the first example of that. This is different from the first 2 chapters in that this is just Sandor's thoughts on a scene that happened, as well as some extension to the dialogue that took place.

-Sandor-

He counted himself lucky for being able to get his hands on a skin of wine. It wasn’t the kind he liked, but it was more than he could have hoped for. He found himself a quiet spot along the parapet wall where he could sit and think about his imminent death. He had expected to die in a horrible way, but he had always thought it might be at the hands of his brother. He hadn’t thought he’d meet his end at the hands of some frozen, dead fucker that had no mind of its own.

Every time he found himself with some time before a battle that could result in his death, his mind tortured him with a lifetime’s worth of regrets. Regret for not killing Gregor when he’d had the chance. Regret for some of the lives he had taken at the command of cruel people who held too much power. Regret for not slicing Joffrey in half when he had the best opportunity to do so. Regret for standing around like a craven when his little bird was beaten bloody time and again. Regret for creeping into her room on the worst night of her life and terrifying her to the point that she refused to leave with him.

There was no greater regret that he felt when he remembered putting that blade to her pretty white throat. He had wanted to scare her badly, wanted her to feel at least a fraction of the horror that he had felt as he watched men around him burn alive. He hadn’t wanted to be alone in his terror, so he’d brought her along with him by sneaking into her room, covered in blood and vomit, and then threatening her life.

Sandor knew, of course, that he would never have harmed her. He would have turned that blade on himself before he gave her a proper cut. But she didn’t know that. And now her last memory of him was of how he’d trapped her beneath him on her bed and made her sing with a dagger pressed into her delicate skin. 

Sansa had sung him the Mother’s Hymn and, if the sky burning green and the smell of cooked flesh hadn’t broken him completely, then her song had. He had torn his ruined white cloak off him and tossed it down, disgusted with everything it stood for, ashamed of what he’d let occur while wearing it.

If he was a braver man, he would have found her, knelt at her feet, begged for an apology, and then sworn himself to protect her for the rest of his life. He had never swore a vow to anyone, but he’d swear it to her.

He took a deep drink of the wine and looked up to see the she-wolf. She stood a couple of feet to his left, watching him. He hadn’t heard her approaching. Girl moved like a ghost. She held her hand out for the wine and he grudgingly passed it to her. She took a seat beside him and he waited for her to get chatty, just as everyone else had done with him that night. Both Tormund and the pretty blacksmith lad had been far too chatty with him and he was filled with a feeling of dread that they saw him as their friend.

_Dumb fuckers._

The she-wolf was eerily quiet. So unlike her. He told her as much.

“Guess I’ve changed,” she responded flatly, before asking, “What are you doing up here?”

“What does it look like?” He rolled his eyes, but he doubted she saw it.

“No, I mean, what are you doing _up here_?” _In the North_, he understood her to mean. “You joined the Brotherhood. You went beyond the Wall with Jon. You’re here now. Why? When was the last time you fought for anyone but yourself?”

Stupid girl. As insightful as she could be, she was bloody blind about some things. “I fought for you, didn’t I?” He turned to her, completely serious and she looked down and he felt a bit triumphant to have put her in her place a bit. It wasn’t something she could even argue with.

“Did you fight for Sansa too?” The question cut through him like a sword and he ground his teeth, not sure of where that question had come from.

“You know I didn’t,” he rasped. “Told you as much, didn’t I? Told you how I stood there and watched her beaten.” He snatched the wine skin back from her, ripped the stopper out with his teeth, and took a long pull.

He could feel those grey eyes on him, eyes that looked enough like his own that people had mistook them for father and daughter on multiple occasions. He found it amusing that the she-wolf could have been his daughter, while her sister…

He stopped his thoughts and realized that Arya was waiting for an answer. He peered over at her and she looked back at him calmly, expectantly.

“What, you going to put me back on your list for what I did to the little bird?” He growled at her.

Her expression didn’t change, but she cocked her head to the side. “Why do you call her that?”

“All that damn chirping,” he shook his head and took another pull at the wine skin. Arya held her hand out and he shoved it at her.

“To hear her tell it,” Arya said, “You weren’t unkind to her.”

“I was nothing _but_ unkind to her,” he argued. What exactly had Sansa been telling her anyway? What in the Seven Hells could make the Stark girls initiate a conversation about _him_?

“Did you hit her?” Arya asked.

He paused, growing more suspicious by the second of the she-wolf’s motivations for this conversation. “No.”

“Did you rip open her dress at Joffrey’s command?”

He felt the growl in his chest rising in him as he remembered that day, how Meryn Trant had bared her lovely skin for all the court to see. Clearly, Sansa had filled her sister in on the abuse she had suffered in Joffrey’s court. His teeth clenched so hard he thought they might break. “No,” he told her.

“But you covered her with your cloak?”

“Only at the Imp’s command,” he said.

Arya was quiet for a moment. “You told them to stop beating her?”

“No.” He was too much the coward for all that. He recalled a brief bout of insanity, a loss of control, in which he’d bellowed _‘Enough!’_ as he’d watched her take blow after blow. But that hardly counted as a demand for the beating to stop.

Arya turned her entire body to him. “I heard different.”

His head spun around, grey eyes meeting grey eyes as he snarled at her. “Heard from _who_? How have you suddenly come by this information?”

Arya rolled her eyes. “From the most reliable source there is.”

Sandor shook his head, pushed thoughts of Lady Stark out of his head before he let himself get lost. “Still a head full of songs. Thought she might have grown up by now.”

“You don’t know her,” Arya snapped, and it surprised him because it was the first emotional response he had gotten from her since he’d met her again. She was such a cold, calculating little thing now. She had always had an aura of danger about her, and now she had learned to control it, which made her deadly. But apparently where her sister was concerned, that red-hot anger boiling beneath the surface was bit too much to conceal.

“Aye, you’re right. I don’t.”

Another set of footsteps shuffled along the stones of the wall and they both looked up to see Beric Fucking Dondarrion. 

“Ah, for fuck’s sake. May as well be at a bloody wedding,” he muttered.

Dondarrion grinned at him, then greeted Arya, who gave him a cold look. “My lady. It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry we parted the way we did.”

Sandor could only imagine what that meant. He hadn’t been overly concerned with asking how she had got on with the Brotherhood after he had kidnapped her from them. If the she-wolf had parted ways with Dondarrion much the same way _he_ had previously parted with Dondarrion, not to mention the way that she’d parted ways with himself, it probably meant she’d wanted to kill him. He turned to her. “Was he on your list?” 

“For a little while,” she answered, still glaring coolly at the Lightning Lord.

“That’s all right,” Dondarrion answered, almost cheerfully. “The Lord of Light has brought us together all the same. This is his moment, when light…”

Sandor cut him off quickly before he could get carried away. “Thoros isn’t here anymore, so I hope you’re not about to give a sermon. Because if you are, the Lord of Light’s going to wonder why he brought you back nineteen times just to watch you die when I chuck you over this fucking wall.”

Dondarrion snorted in amusement then reached for the wine skin. Sandor tossed it to him and heard the shuffle of Arya’s feet as she got up. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not spending my final hours with you two miserable old shits,” she answered.

Dondarrion tossed the wine skin back to him. “I would wager I know who she _is_ going to spend her last night with.”

Sandor looked up, watched Dondarrion grin after Arya’s retreating form. Sandor could have guessed as much too. “The pretty blacksmith, I’m sure.”

“That’s the one,” Dondarrion replied. “They traveled with the Brotherhood years ago. They were protective of one another. Spent all their time together. I think she was probably in love with him.”

“Don’t think a she-wolf knows how,” Sandor grunted, wishing Dondarrion would shut up so he could get back to his dark thoughts on his imminent death.

“She knew how,” Dondarrion said quietly. “At least, she did at the time. The lady was crushed when we sold the boy to the Red Priestess. Now, though,” he shook his head doubtfully.

Ah, so that’s why the she-wolf wanted to geld Dondarrion. Made sense.

“Now, she’s different. I only know a bit of what that child’s been through. She was all passionate anger when I traveled with her, not this cold, dangerous lady that just sat here in front of me. Almost unrecognizable from the angry child I knew. It seems she had to change to survive it all.”

“Aye, she said that,” Sandor agreed, not caring one way or another if she still loved her pretty blacksmith. The she-wolf didn’t need feelings to get in her way with what they were about to face. Though he was certain that it was he who she had gone to find, Sandor couldn’t see Arya making any desperate declarations of love in her final hours. She wasn’t the type. Likely never had been, even before she’d turned into a cold killer.

“She cares about you though,” Dondarrion said, nodding to him. “Might be she can’t love our young Gendry anymore after all she’s been through, but she cares for you. She looks up to you.”

Sandor snorted. “Might be you don’t know the girl as well as you think.”

“I know you, don’t I? The two of you are cut from the same cloth.”

Sandor leaned his head back against the cold stones and stared at Dondarrion. He wasn’t too comfortable with this religious zealot being able to read him so easily and he imagined the she-wolf wouldn’t be amused either. But deep in the back of his mind, he could acknowledge that, yes, Arya was more like him than any child he might have had. She was more like him than she was any of her family. They had spent months together, and while it was a considerable length of time, he wondered how it had erased all those happy years she’d had with the Starks. He supposed repeated trauma could do that to a person, turn them into a rage-filled monster with a calm exterior. Still, as damaged as she was, he was proud of her.

“Not much like her sister,” Sandor commented before he could stop himself. The wine must have been getting to him. He normally guarded his tongue carefully, but wine always loosened it.

Dondarrion’s one eye might as well have bored a hole in him. “No, I would imagine Lady Sansa is quite different from your she-wolf.”

Sandor snorted and words came tumbling forth again, almost as though he couldn’t stop himself. “They both hate my fucking guts, so there’s that.”

_Where are these words coming from??_

Dondarrion’s one eye narrowed. “Lady Arya does not hate you, no matter how much she tries to give that impression. What makes you think Lady Sansa hates you? She seems a generous hostess.”

“Aye, she is. Generous, courteous, as proper and purebred as they come,” he muttered darkly. She’d always been painfully fucking perfect.

_Stop talking, you buggering idiot._

“Do you know Lady Sansa, outside our short time here?”

“Aye,” he said when he should have kept quiet. “I was one of her tormentors in King’s Landing when she was Joffrey’s prisoner.”

Understanding descended over Dondarrion’s features and he gave one nod. “I told you there’s still time for you, Clegane. It’s never too late to right any wrongs. Have you thought of speaking with the lady?”

“No,” he said, and he wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to get anywhere near her, lest he fall at her feet and beg her forgiveness. He had softened enough over the years that his weaknesses were apt to make him _very_ weak, and Sansa was certainly the greatest of those weaknesses. He had seen her from distances and that was bad enough.

“Are you afraid of her, Clegane?”

At that comment, Sandor’s initial inclination was to snarl and growl at the one-eyed bastard, and he even sat forward, finger ready to point at him menacingly, but he stopped short. He huffed out a breath and shook his head. “Aye. I’m afraid. And I’m also done talking.” He stood abruptly, tossed the wine skin to Dondarrion and strode away.


	4. Gendry I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heavy thoughts from our favorite blacksmith.

-Gendry-

Gendry had been deeply asleep, so tired that when he awoke it took him a minute to realize that he wasn’t still dreaming. There on the sacks of grain, covered in his cloak to cover her nakedness, lay Arya Stark. He could tell she was awake by her breathing pattern. She was facing away from him. He reached over and rubbed his knuckles against an exposed shoulder.

She slowly turned to look at him and gave him a half smile. He wanted to pull her closer to him, but even after the laying with her, he worried that touching her may be too intimate. He settled for continuing to stroke the skin of her shoulder as her eyes drifted closed. He knew she wouldn’t sleep, but he didn’t mind the silence much, so long as he could touch her.

Her eyes weren’t the same, he noticed. Oh, the same color, for sure. That familiar grey that reminded him of rain clouds before a storm. But he remembered her as a girl, a fire in those eyes and anger seething beneath the surface. He remembered her sharp tongue and how she said whatever was on her mind.

There was none of that now and he tried not to miss it too much. That old stubbornness and strength of hers were as evident as they’d ever been. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her, she’d been fearless, never backing down from a challenge. He had been ready to pummel Hot Pie for bothering her. He’d known immediately that she was a girl, no matter how many others she’d had fooled.

For one, she was too damn pretty to be a boy. Others clearly let the dirty face and her shorn hair fool them, unwilling to look beneath the surface of the dirt to see what she was. He hadn’t known, of course, that she was a princess until later on. She’d hid that fact well enough with her wild ways and coarse language.

Gendry had grown protective of her very quickly, though he was sure that if he’d let her know this, she would’ve taken offense to it. Seven Hells, but she was better equipped to handle danger than he could ever hope to be, even at twelve years old. For the first few months on the road, he had fancied that he might be a big brother figure to her. Gendry hadn’t grown up with any siblings. And because he was orphaned at such a young age, his starved heart grasped at the closest thing it recognized to family.

He wasn’t sure when it had changed. They traveled together for so long. At some point, after they had been captured and taken to Harrenhal, he noticed her body for the first time, wrapped as it was in boy’s clothing. Her waist was tiny, her hips had begun to flare out, and he _could not stop looking_. He was five years older than her and beyond ashamed of himself. After they were found by the Brotherhood, it became harder to not look. They were considerably safer than they’d been at Harrenhal, and as a result, Gendry had less time to think about dying and a bit more time to appreciate the few good things he had in his life.

Their tumble into the dirt at the forge at Acorn Hall had been an eye opener for him. He had been scolded for trying to “steal kisses from a princess” and after that, he’d grown more sullen with the realization that, even if he allowed himself to develop feelings for Arya, it would never go anywhere. The two of them had fought like cats and dogs in the weeks that followed, culminating in him telling her he wouldn’t accompany her to Riverrun, but stay on with the Brotherhood.

Gendry had expected another fight. He’d expected her to come at him with her sharp words and sharper claws, but instead, he’d watched her fall apart before his eyes. Her whole body seemed to crush beneath the weight of his words and those startling eyes filled with tears. He hadn’t known how to handle that situation, and before he could come up with something to say to her to right the rift he had caused, the Red Woman had come along and snatched him away.

He felt her eyes on him and met her stare.

“Where’d you go?” She asked him in a low voice.

“The past,” he sighed. “A lot has happened since I saw you last. I imagine you’ve been even busier.” He thought about the scars he’d seen on her body. “What happened to you, Arya?”

Her eyes flickered away from him then, and he knew then that she wouldn’t tell him. It stung because he would tell her anything. He wanted to tell her how he’d sat in the filth of Dragonstone’s dungeons, contemplating his likely death and thinking about the last time he’d properly spoken to her. He wanted to tell her about his unlikely escape and return to Flea Bottom, about how he laid awake at night on his little cot, wondering where she was, but somehow knowing that she was alive because a world in which he survived and she didn’t just made no sense to him.

Instead of answering him, Arya asked a question of her own. “What about the past do you think about?” Her eyes slid back to him, looking for all the world like she wasn’t really interested in his answer.

“You,” he answered honestly. “Us.”

Her brow furrowed, but she didn’t have a response for that.

“You’ve changed,” he told her.

“I have,” she said.

“Will you ever tell me what you’ve been up to all these years?”

“Maybe if we don’t die.”

She said it so nonchalantly, but her calm voice did nothing to stop the fear that clutched at his stomach. Gendry had escaped death plenty and he knew Arya had too, but the thought of her falling to the Army of the Dead chilled him to the bone. He had never feared that she had died in all the years since they were separated, but he feared for her now. And suddenly he didn’t care if he was being too forward.

He reached over and snatched her up into his arms. She looked startled at first, but didn’t fight him when he pulled her flush against his chest.

“You aren’t going to die, Arya,” he told her stupidly, knowing there was little he could do to prevent it, knowing that the probability that she would die was greater than he wanted to think about.

Her little cold hand found his cheek and the tenderness of her touch was more than he thought she was capable of. “You don’t know that. I told you before that I’m not frightened of death. It’s been chasing me for years now and I’ve managed to escape. I don’t expect to outrun it forever.”

He didn’t tell her, couldn’t tell her, what was on his mind. The truth of it was that if she didn’t come out of this alive, he wasn’t sure how he could draw another breath. She’d name him a craven if he told her that he was scared for her. He didn’t want to die either, but he could accept his death with more ease than he could accept hers because living in a world where Arya Stark didn’t exist was unacceptable to him. 

He wanted to say a thousand things in that moment. He wanted to tell her that he’d protect her, but he couldn’t. He wanted to tell her that she was more beautiful than he could have imagined, and that he had imagined _plenty_. He wanted to tell her that she would live forever, defying all the gods as she had always done. But those were pretty words that she wouldn’t care for, that he didn’t have the strength to say.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her; he wanted to say it not because he was some desperate fool clinging to the last woman he may ever lie with on the night before his death, but because he _did _love her. He had loved her for a very long time, though it had evolved over the years, shifting from friendship to something else.

“Does it bother you?” She asked him after a few minutes. “Does it bother you that I’ve changed?”

He would have said yes, if he was being honest. He wanted to ask her what happened to that girl he had met years ago, full of fire and passion, but it was a useless question because he already knew. That fiery little girl had been replaced by an ice queen. He had heard her sister called such by many of the men they were traveling with, but he felt they were wrong. Lady Sansa seemed warm enough when she needed to be. She was kind, she offered polite smiles, and she seemed to have affection for children as he’d seen her holding the hands of a couple of orphans who had arrived at Winterfell shortly after he had. Lady Sansa seemed to wear only the mask of an ice queen.

But Arya… Arya was the true ice queen, not just on the surface like Lady Sansa, but deep down in her bones. And it was so at odds with how he remembered her that at times he questioned if he’d made her up in his head. Had she always been so indifferent, so uncaring? _No_, he told himself, remembering how she had looked at him when she said she could be his family, _not always. Not to me._

“No,” he answered her finally, lying to her. Because what good would it do now? Anger sparked within him, but he shoved it away, because really _what did it matter_? They would either both die soon, or one of them would die, or perhaps they would both live, but it wouldn’t change her back to the person she’d been before. There was no going back. Maybe she was too scarred, too far gone to care about anyone other than her family now.

_“I can be your family,” _she had told him in earnest. But that was a long time ago, and Gendry had made the decision to leave her, even before he’d been snatched up by that Red Witch.

Might be that Arya had let him go as soon as he’d answered her with _“You wouldn’t be my family, you’d be m’lady”_. Perhaps he had cut her so deeply that there was nothing that could make her look at him like that again, like he mattered to her, like she _loved_ him too.

It was not lost on Gendry, however stupid he may be that Arya may have been the only one to truly love him and he had rejected her. He deserved nothing less than this cold shell of a woman she was giving him.

They lay in silence for perhaps another hour before the horn sounded announcing the Dead. After the horn sounded a third time, Arya was halfway dressed, moving much quicker than he could. When she finished, she looked back over her shoulder at him.

“Try not to die,” she said.

He gave her one nod. “You, too, m’lady.”


	5. Arya II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens after killing the Night King

-Arya-

She sat in the Godswood for what felt like hours. Bran watched her, not saying a word. She was leaned against the Heart Tree and absently twirled the Valyrian steel dagger in her hand. Crystals of ice twinkled atop the snow, and it might have been beautiful if it had not been the remains of creatures that would have ended the world as she knew it. She was strangely calm, as she often was, after coming so close to death. The weight of what she had done and what people would think of her, that she was a hero, was not something she wanted to think on just now. Jon found them after some time, likely not long after it had happened, but Arya’s sense of time was warped, so she was unsure how long it had truly been.

Jon collapsed in front of Bran, took his brother’s face in his hands, and tried to stifle a sob of relief. Bran merely looked at him calmly, hardly blinking. Jon’s eyes found Theon’s body and his shoulders sagged, head bowed. He was surrounded by scattered remains of wights. Arya figured he had taken down a considerable number before falling.

“It was the Night King,” Bran said as his eyes found Theon’s body. 

Jon nodded. “How did it happen?” Arya knew that Jon meant _how did it end_.

Bran’s cast his eyes toward Arya, sitting beneath the tree. Jon followed his gaze to Arya, his face a mask of confusion. She met his stare, didn’t blink.

“Arya,” Jon breathed. He had seen her when he came in, she knew, but clearly hadn’t put the pieces together. Perhaps he thought it was Theon who had ended it all before he had succumbed to his injury.

“Yes,” Bran confirmed. “It was Arya.”

Arya stood up, dusted the snow from her breeches, and looked up to the lightening sky. Dawn was approaching and there was work to be done. She made her way to Jon, who stood and embraced her. She returned the hug, closed her eyes for just a moment to let the relief that he was alive wash over her, then gently pulled away.

She didn’t feel like answering any questions. She picked her way through the bodies, unable to keep from stepping atop some of them. As the early morning sun began to climb, she saw Sandor and the Red Witch emerge from the room they were holed up in. She felt another breath of relief leave her body at the sight of the Hound. Stubborn fucker had managed to live another day. She had been worried that something would happen to him after she left him. 

Arya tried not to look too closely at the dead scattered on the ground, unsure of how she would react if Gendry was among them.

_Gendry_.

The soreness between her legs was still fresh and she savored it. She tried not to come undone at the thought that the ache he’d left in her body might be all that was left of him. Perhaps any other girl who loved a boy might be dashing around, desperately looking for their lover, but Arya was not any other girl. She needed her strength right now and whatever the truth was would surely find her later. 

She saw Sansa emerge from the crypts a few moments later, and though Arya had planned on passing her by, getting some privacy before word spread about what she had done, some uncontrollable force took hold of her and she found that her feet were moving of their own accord. When she reached the group coming out of the crypts, Tyrion Lannister turned to her, his mouth opening to make some comment. She ignored him and threw her arms around Sansa’s waist, nearly knocking her over with the force.

“Oh,” Sansa said, her hands coming to Arya’s shoulders, whether to return the embrace or steady herself, Arya wasn’t sure. “_Oh!_ Arya, you’re all right!”

Arya squeezed her eyes shut and nodded into her sister’s shoulder. “So are you.”

She felt Sansa’s hands trembling on her shoulders and pulled back to study her face. Sansa’s pretty face was paler than normal, and her bottom lip quivered. “I didn’t use the dagger you gave me,” Sansa said.

“I’m happy you didn’t have to,” Arya said seriously.

Sansa shook her head. “I-I couldn’t do anything. I was frozen with fear and they were coming through the _walls_.”

Arya clasped Sansa’s shaking hands and squeezed them a bit. “Sansa, you’re alive. It’s over. You’re all right.”

Sansa shook her head again, a bit more vigorously this time. “Arya, people were _dying_ around me. And I couldn’t do _anything_.”

“I know,” Arya said, unable to find any word of comfort for her. “I know. It’s over now though,” she looked around at the carnage that awaited them today, all of the bodies that would need to be burned and realized Sansa needed a purpose. “There’s work to be done, Lady Stark. Let’s get some wine and food before you’re thrown head-first into funeral organization.”

Sansa nodded and made to follow Arya. She turned back to Tyrion, who stood watching them, wearing the same haunted look that Sansa wore. She nodded to him and he nodded back to her, and then she set off with Arya for the kitchens.

Half an hour later, they sat in Sansa’s solar, avoiding the crowds of the great hall, as they nibbled on bread and sipped at wine. The wine seemed to calm Sansa’s nerves and Arya watched as she transformed from a shaken young woman back into the Lady of Winterfell. 

“Have you seen Jon?” Sansa asked, keeping her voice steady, and Arya knew this was one of the things that could undo her.

She nodded. “He’s alive. So is Bran,” she paused, her eyes dropping from Sansa’s face. “Theon…”

“Theon…he lives?” Sansa sat forward in her chair and Arya could feel her eyes intently studying her face. But Arya was adept at hiding her emotions, so Sansa would get nothing from watching her.

“He fell, Sansa. The Night King got to him.”

She watched Sansa’s jaw clench, the movement of her long throat as she swallowed hard, the spring of tears to her eyes. A sob tore its way form her chest and she covered her mouth. “He’s gone?”

Arya nodded once. She wanted to reach for her sister again, just as she had when she had seen that she was alive, but Arya was no good at giving comfort. Relief had driven her into her sister’s arms a little while ago, but now she was frozen in place, unable to do anything to ease Sansa’s torment.

“He died protecting Bran,” Arya offered, unsure if that revelation would ease anything.

Sansa nodded. “Of course he did. He was our family. He died protecting his own.”

Arya was unsure what to say to that. She still had some hard feelings toward Theon for betraying Robb. Anger was a thing that she was unable to let go easily. Sansa had always loved easier, so perhaps forgiveness came to her easier as well. Arya was sorry that he had died, but she didn’t feel the level of loss that Sansa was clearly feeling.

“I need to get started, I suppose,” Sansa sniffed and stood up. She wiped at her eyes, then looked toward the window where the sun shone through, bathing the room in pale light. “I’m scared to know who else I will find out there.”

As Sansa made to leave, Arya thought of something that may ease her worry a bit. She turned as Sansa opened the door and called to her.

Sansa stopped and turned around, looking expectantly at her sister.

“The Hound,” she started, and Sansa’s eyes widened in fear. “Sandor,” she corrected. “He’s alive.”

Her sister’s entire demeanor changed at those two words. A rush of breath left her body and her shoulders sagged in relief. A hand went to her heart and her teeth pressed into her body lip. A fresh wave of tears coursed down her cheeks, but this time, Arya could tell, they were tears of relief.

She left shortly after Sansa, resolved to the fact that she would be picking through the dead and helping to arrange funeral pyres. She wandered into the courtyard, noting that many of the bodies had already been moved and a path had been cleared for the survivors who were coming and going. The Hound was loading the dead onto a wain to be taken outside the castle walls. She came within a few feet of him, watching him work as though he hadn’t just spent an entire night fighting and running. He looked up, his eyes meeting hers, and she watched as he appeared to breathe a sigh of relief. He obviously hadn’t seen her earlier when she’d seen him. She thought about who she’d seen him emerge with a frowned.

“The Red Woman?” She asked him, unsure of what she was going to do when she found out where she was. Perhaps the witch had opened her eyes to what she needed to do, but she had also done unspeakable things to Gendry.

“Gone,” he rasped. “Disappeared.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. 

Jon appeared in the courtyard then, his arm wrapped around a distraught Daenerys Targaryen. Arya wondered who had died to produce such a reaction in her. Arya hadn’t seen the dragons, save for the dead one who had been in the courtyard. Had the dragon queen lost another of her children, or both? Jon seemed to have his hands full and Arya wasn’t comfortable around grieving mothers, so she slipped past them. But as soon as she exited the courtyard, she heard the unmistakable screech of the big one, Drogon, followed by the slightly differing pitch of the one Jon had ridden.

_Not the dragons then_.

Bran was parked near the entrance of the Godswood, speaking to Tyrion Lannister. The dwarf seemed to be the only person lately that Bran somewhat enjoyed chatting with, and evidently Tyrion was not put off by Bran’s oddities.

Arya hadn’t known where she was going, just following her feet, when she found herself at the entrance of the forge. She moved inside and noted that it was empty. Everyone who wasn’t dead was likely helping with the cleanup. She should have known he wouldn’t be here. Even so, panic began to tighten her chest and her breathing hitched. 

_What if he didn’t make it?_

Arya felt it in her chest, that terrible pain associated with loss, like a hole opening up from the inside. She had known that this was likely. She hadn’t looked for him really because she’d been too worried about what she’d find. But surely he would have been in the courtyard with the rest. Surely she would have already seen him.

She turned around and left the forge, unable to stand the sight of it any longer because it would forever be associated with Gendry. She had to stay busy, despite what was happening in her head and in her heart. As she made her way back to the courtyard, thoughts about what all they had been through, what all they had survived, plagued her. 

They had escaped King’s Landing with the Night’s Watch, both of them having somehow escaped the Lannisters. They had been captured and imprisoned at Harrenhal, watching day after day as people were taken to be tortured. They had slept back to back in the mud and the shit, taking comfort in the one thing they could, which was each other. They had eaten bugs and worms to survive. And when he’d been taken from her, somehow he’d survived the Red Woman.

Arya had cheated death many times, and she supposed Gendry had as well, only on a smaller scale, and just as she’d told him, no one could outrun death forever. 

She could handle physical pain and she could turn away from many things that would move others to tears, but losing Gendry…

She couldn’t handle it anymore. She was too exposed to break down. She moved away from everyone, heading out of the open gate, wanting to put some space between herself and people she knew. There were bound to be hundreds of people outside the walls as well, but then she’d just keep walking if she needed to. She might walk all the way to Winter Town.

A few people who recognized her called out to her, but she only gave them a nod and continued on, unsure if she could speak without letting loose too many emotions. She had been very well-trained to hide such things, but she guessed that perhaps some things cut too deep to ignore. She heard her name on several lips, but it was as though she were underwater, unable to hear them clearly because her mind was screaming with the agony that she _hadn’t seen him_.

A hand grabbed at her right wrist, and she drew the dagger almost without thinking, spun around and had it at the throat of whoever had grabbed her before she had even formed a coherent thought. 

He looked at her with wide, bright blue eyes, his mouth agape. He glanced down at the dagger at his throat, then up to her face, looking a bit exasperated. 

“Gendry?” Her voice sounded tired, well-used, and raspy, and it strangely reminded her of the Hound.

“Arya,” he said, a little dumbly, glancing at the dagger again.

She quickly replaced it on her belt. She took a deep breath in, let it back out. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not,” he told her, looking over his body as though just checking to make sure everything was intact. “I…heard what you did.”

“Of course you did,” she looked away, uncomfortable with how quickly the news was spreading.

He stared at her, mayhap a bit awkwardly, and she realized that he was debating whether or not to touch her. She made the decision for him. She lifted onto her tiptoes and brushed a quick kiss on his cheek. “I’m glad you are all right. Find me later.

Then she left him, because seeming him alive caused just as many emotions inside her as thinking that he’d been dead. And she wasn’t quite ready to deal with that just yet.


	6. Sansa II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa's thoughts the day after the long night.

-Sansa-

Bone-tired and heart-heavy, Sansa watched as the final bodies were carried to the massive fires. She had hoped that Arya had been mistaken about Theon, hoped that Arya had seen someone else that looked like Theon, hoped that perhaps Theon was only injured and that once his body was moved, he’d stir awake.

There was no mistaking it of course. She had found him at the edge of the clearing where the Heart Tree sat. The ancient face in the white bark was as grim as ever. Theon’s eyes were open still, so she brushed her hands over the lids, closing them. She lifted his mangled hand, with the deep scars from the flaying, the missing fingers. She pressed a kiss to his cold skin. If she’d had any prayers to offer any longer, she would have said one for him.

She had lost herself for a moment, cried into Jon’s shoulder when both had things to do. When she pulled herself together, she turned on her heel and left, unable to look at Theon right now without coming apart at the seams. He was as much a brother to her as Bran. It had taken her years to understand that blood truly did not matter. 

As a child, even Jon, the brother she’d grown so close to in the last year, had hardly been considered family. She had followed her mother’s lead in treating him as the dirty little secret, a lesser Stark, a _half-brother_. She was ashamed to remember how she had treated him. She had given Theon little more consideration. He was the son of a traitor, a prisoner of House Stark, though her father had never treated him that way. While she may not have treated him as badly as the Lannisters treated her, she certainly had treated him as less.

Sansa recalled the outrage she had felt at his betrayal. How dare he betray her family when he had been treated so well? And he had been treated well, but not by her. It vexed her to think how she might have grown up had she not rode South with her father. Even after all the tragedy leaving Winterfell had brought, she wondered if it hadn’t at least made her a better person in the end, if also damaged beyond repair. 

When she had met Theon again after being sold to Ramsay, she had been enraged. She hadn’t wanted to look at him or touch him. She had thought he had killed her baby brothers. With time, she learned he hadn’t. And with more time, he had helped her escape from Ramsay. The full extent of Theon’s abuse at Ramsay’s hands had given the two of them a shared tragedy. Her face was intact, it was true, but her body was a mess of scars. Few people knew that her elaborate gowns covered the abuse she had suffered.

Sansa had felt for a time that she would never want anyone to touch her again. She imagined Theon felt the same way, but he left her so soon after their escape and had only reappeared shortly before the battle to die protecting Bran. But Sansa found that, as time went on, Ramsay’s ghost was fading more and more. She had feared that his parting words to her would prove to be true, that he would always be with her. Even as his hounds chewed his face off, deep within her, she had felt fear that she would never truly shake him.

She had been diligent about taking moon tea in the days after she escaped him. There was no way she would allow his seed to grow in her belly; and if the moon tea had failed, she may have taken her own life. She had been worried when her moon blood was late. There had been no maester at Castle Black when she arrived to examine her. Instead, she had eventually been examined by a maester at Bear Island, who assured her she was not carrying a child and advised her that her cycles were likely irregular due to the trauma she had received. Sure enough, they had returned and though she was relieved, she knew that it also meant to Jon that, if he needed to, he could marry her off to someone for an alliance since her body seemed healthy enough to bear children.

She looked at Jon now, staring at the pyre where Lyanna Mormont rested. There was a conversation she still needed to have with him. Aside from the threat of Cersei and the Ironborn, and the threat that there still may not be enough food, even with all the dead, Sansa wanted to ensure that Jon didn’t plan to marry her off to someone. 

She knew that she may have to marry, eventually, to produce an heir, but she was determined it would be to a man of her choosing this time.

Daenerys stepped forward, heading to the pyre occupied by her advisor, Ser Jorah Mormont. Sansa stepped away too, deciding that she needed to say a final good-bye to Theon. Her hands shook as she looked down at his body. He could have been sleeping but for the paleness of his skin, the blue of his lips. She laid her hand on his chest and felt grief well up in her, a sob burst from her throat and she dropped her head to his chest. 

Her cries wracked her body and her stomach turned. _Don’t get sick now_, she told herself. All she had eaten was the bread she had shared with Arya just after dawn; that small amount of food, mixed with perhaps too much wine, threatened to rise in her throat. She fought it down as she stood up. She couldn’t fall apart in front of these people. She reached into her cloak and found the direwolf pin clipped to her dress. She slid it into the leather of Theon’s armor before she backed away.

Jon said some words about the fallen while Sansa struggled to hold herself together. She looked around at those in attendance. Bran was stoic as ever, not having shed a tear for any of the fallen. She tried not to angry at him, but it was so hard. It was a constant struggle to remind herself that he wasn’t her Bran anymore. Arya’s face was still, and had Sansa not been her sister, she might not have noticed the clench in her jaw or the storm in her grey eyes. She was hurting too. Sansa wondered if her blacksmith had made it through the night.

Some instinct made her glance over her right shoulder and there he was, staring straight ahead, dwarfing everyone near him. Sandor didn’t appear to have any serious injuries, though his face was a little battered. She looked away before he could catch her watching him.

Daenerys had insisted on a feast to celebrate the end of the Long Night, and after spending a couple of hours checking the supply inventory, Sansa rested a bit easier when she discovered that they could spare food for a good meal, if not a true feast. However much it hurt to lose so many people, it had left more food for the survivors.

The feast was to take place at sundown, so Sansa had time to rest. She napped, then ordered a bath brought to her. She soaked in her copper tub, pleasantly surprised that people were not beating down her door demanding to speak with her. There was still so much to be done.

Sansa guessed her siblings had ordered that everyone leave her alone for a while. When she was done with her bath, she stood in front of her looking glass as she waited for her maid to return to help her dress. Her eyes scanned her shoulders, her breasts, her stomach, her legs….her skin was a map of scars. Some of the scars were small and silvery, others were raised and red. The worst ran from the hollow of her neck all the way down to her pubic bone. Her body had been pleasing to look on before Ramsay, even she knew that. Her breasts were round and full, tipped with small pink nipples. Her round hips curved upward to a tiny waist. Her legs were long, slender, and pale as milk.

She would still be beautiful if not for Ramsay. Her maid knocked and she allowed entrance. The maid helped her dress and pinned half of her hair into a braided bun at the back of her head while the other half remained loose, falling down her back. As usual, her dress covered everything except her hands and face. She dismissed her maid and awaited Brienne, knowing that her shield would want to escort her to dinner.

She had been relieved to find Brienne alive shortly after she had spoken with Arya. She had been in the company of the Kingslayer. Her shield was quiet as they made their way to the great hall. When Brienne made to follow her up to the dais, Sansa stopped her.

“You are as much a hero as any of them,” Sansa said. “You should join your fellow warriors.”

Brienne gave her a small smile and nodded to her before disappearing into the crowd.

Sansa wondered where Arya was. Her sister had always excelled at disappearing. Sansa knew she was reluctant to accept any attention given to her for killing the Night King. 

Sansa was seated between Bran and Jon, and neither brother provided much company, lost as they were in their own thoughts. Sansa ate her meal and sipped her wine and watched her people celebrate. Every few minutes, she’d steal a glance at Daenerys. The dragon queen did not appear to be in a celebratory mood. While Jon was quiet because he was likely thinking of their next battle, Daenerys appeared almost irritated.

Everything about Daenerys Targaryen unnerved Sansa. House Stark’s history with the Targaryens was a bloody one. Sansa tried to explain to Jon why she had reservations about Daenerys, but he brushed her off every time. It was true enough that Daenerys had helped to end the Long Night, but it was truer still that had it not been for Arya, no one else may have gotten close enough to carry out the execution.

That handsome blacksmith of Arya’s caught her eye as he pushed through the crowds to the exit. Sansa had thought perhaps they would be together, but the blacksmith- Gendry, she remembered- was alone. The dragon queen called out to him and he stopped. 

“You’re Robert Baratheon’s son,” Daenerys told him, any idle chatter still taking place ceased at the statement. Gendry nodded once. “You are aware he took my father’s throne and tried to have me murdered?”

Gendry looked worried, and Sansa couldn’t blame him. Her eyes danced between the blacksmith, the queen, and her brother. Her eyes found Tyrion’s too, and he looked just as nervous as she felt. Sansa’s eyes moved back to Gendry, and when she studied him, she could see it. The strong line of his jaw, the black hair, the startling blue eyes. Yes, she could see King Robert in him.

“I didn’t even know he was my father until after he was dead,” Gendry answered with a thick voice, his gaze dropped to the floor, then bounced back to Daenerys, then dropped back to the floor.

“Yes, he’s dead. His brothers are too.” Daenerys paused, letting that sink in for Gendry. Sansa knew what was coming then, and she tensed. “So who’s the Lord of Storm’s End now?”

“I don’t know, Your Grace.” Poor Gendry was slower to catch up with Daenerys’s intention than Sansa was.

“Does anyone?” Daenerys asked the room at large.

Sansa took another sip of her wine, then a larger gulp. Daenerys was no fool. She knew exactly what she was doing. It was something that, had Jon still had the power to do it, should have been done by him. Now, Daenerys was ensuring his loyalty to her.

“I think you should be Lord of Storm’s End,” she told him after a pregnant pause.

The room erupted into chatter at that pronouncement. Gendry’s blue eyes widened. “I can’t be. I’m a bastard,” he explained unnecessarily.

“No, you are Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm’s End, the lawful son of Robert Baratheon, because that is what I have made you.”

Sansa saw Gendry turn to Lord Davos, as though looking for reassurance in a friendly face. A smile broke over Davos’s face and he raised a toast, “To Lord Gendry Baratheon of Storm’s End!”

The room stood for him and repeated the toast and Sansa sat, frozen. She didn’t know how close Gendry was to her sister, but surely this would tip his loyalty to the dragon queen. She glanced toward Tyrion, saw that Daenerys whispered something to him with a triumphant smile on her face. Tyrion met her eyes and once again, she felt as though his face mirrored what she felt: anxiety.

She forced down her nerves and tried to enjoy the rest of her evening. The red-haired Wildling showed up, encouraging Jon to guzzle his ale. Sansa laughingly went along with it and listened as Tormund painted a picture of Jon as a legendary hero, a title which Sansa felt he had earned. But her eyes kept finding the dragon queen, sitting further down the table, a darkness in her eyes that looked to Sansa a lot like jealousy.

Her behavior angered Sansa. Daenerys had aided them, it was true, but it did not take away from all of the heroic things Jon had accomplished, everything he had suffered, along with the rest of their family. Worried that her anger would outweigh her courtesy, Sansa stood abruptly and walked down into the crowd. She didn’t want to talk to anyone in particular, so she found a spot against the wall. She tried to calm herself down and sipped at her wine.

But her eyes found _him_ again, as they always seemed to. She wasn’t in his direct line of sight, so she let herself look. The scars covering half his face no longer bothered her, and looking back, she wasn’t sure they ever had. She dreamed of him so many times. She had wondered in the months after he abandoned Joffrey what would have happened if she had agreed to go with him. Perhaps they would have ended up dead. 

He was handsome, she realized, and it aggravated her that she had never seen it. She had discovered some years ago that she had an attraction to him. She had been puzzled over it at the time she discovered it, but as she had grown, she realized that there was much more to attraction than a pretty face. His height and his muscles were attractive enough, but now, she couldn’t look away from his face. It was so at odds with how she had reacted to him as a child. She liked his dark grey eyes and was pleased to see that, even though irritated, he didn’t seem truly angry, and certainly not full of rage. His full bottom lip was visible beneath his mustache and she found herself wondering if it would be soft on her lips. 

Tormund had joined him now and appeared to be telling him a sad story. Sandor didn’t appear to care, and soon enough, the Wilding’s attention was drawn to a pretty Northern girl at the next table. And she had a friend.

Sansa felt something suspiciously like jealously rise in her as she watched the second girl drop into Tormund’s vacated seat. Her hands crept around Sandor’s bicep and Sansa felt her grip tighten on her cup of wine. She watched the girl say something to him, but he seemed just as uninterested in conversation with her as he had Tormund. Finally, he turned to her, growled, bared his teeth, and she scampered off.

Her feet moved of their own volition and she said, “She could have made you happy, for a little while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI the chapter after this one is like, 1000 words longer.


	7. Sandor II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of the previous chapter.
> 
> Then, Sandor takes a walk with the Lady of Winterfell.

-Sandor-

Just as soon as he’d chased off the Northern girl who probably just wanted to brag about taming the Hound, he heard a voice he hadn’t expected to hear ever again.

“She could’ve made you happy for a little while.”

And there she was, the Lady of Winterfell, taking a seat across from him, wine cup clasped in her dainty little hand. He met those sky-blue eyes only a moment before he had to look away and muttered, “There’s only one thing that will make me happy.”

“And what’s that?”

Unable to determine what she was playing at, he looked back up and snapped, “That’s my fucking business.”

Astonishingly, she didn’t even blink at his bark. Her gaze was steady, interested, and it unnerved him.

“Used to be you couldn’t look at me,” he told her, hoping to crack this ice queen with some uncomfortable truths.

It didn’t work.

“That was a long time ago,” she answered. He saw the ghost of a smile on her full lips. “I’ve seen much worse than you since then.”

Being the bastard that he was, he pushed harder at her, daring to open wounds on her soul that she had covered well. “Yes, I’ve heard,” he told her, and the small smile fell from her lips. “Heard you were broken in. Heard you were broken in _rough_.”

She blinked and he watched her swallow, but just as quickly as he’d landed the blow, she recovered and said, “And he got what he deserved. I gave it to him.”

Perplexed, but trying not to seem too interested, he asked, “How?”

There was another ghost of a smile on those lips as she answered, “Hounds.”

He couldn’t control the laughter that bubbled forth, and at the sound of it, her lips turned upwards into a true smile.

“You’ve changed, little bird,” he said, still smiling back at her as he lifted his wine to his lips.

They shared a look for a few moments, and he had to fight not get drawn into her. She had always had a pull on him that he had never understood, and it was bothersome to learn that rather than weakening in the years since he’d last seen her, the pull had gotten stronger. He wanted to touch her.

“None of it would have happened if you’d left King’s Landing with me.” He had been waiting years to say that. He truly wasn’t trying to throw her past decisions in her face, but he also agonized over the knowledge that it could have been so different for her. “No Littlefinger, no Ramsay. None of it,” his eyes found hers again, and this time she looked away. 

But she moved her hand across the table until it covered his, her thumb brushing softly across his skin, and his eyes dropped between them, watching that delicate white hand resting atop his own. The old Hound, the meaner Hound, would have jerked his hand away. But he didn’t.

“Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest, I would have stayed a little bird all my life.”

He had nothing to say to that. She pulled her hand away and moved as though she was going to get up, but his hand shot across the table and grasped hers. Her eyes shot down to where he touched her, but she didn’t jerk away either. It was perhaps the bravest thing he’d ever done.

“No, Sansa,” he told her, desperate now for her to understand something. Belatedly, he realized he shouldn’t have used her name. “You don’t give those cunts credit for what you are.”

Her brows lowered and she settled back into her seat. He was still holding onto her hand, so he let it go, but leant further across the table. Her head turned to the side, studying him. “You knew me as a girl, Sandor. I was weak and stupid. If not for the trials I’ve been through, would I not still be that way?”

He shook his head, caught up a bit in the way his name sounded on her lips. “You’re wrong. You weren’t weak. You weren’t stupid. Might be you were naïve. You survived Joffrey first. You did that on your own.”

The corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile. “No. I did that with your help. You told me to give him what he wants. It was a valuable piece of advice.”

“Just don’t…” He didn’t know if he had the words to explain to her what he meant. “Don’t credit the shit things that have happened to you as the reason you’re here. Those shit things didn’t make you strong. You survived those shit things because you were _already _strong.”

It was the most he’d said to her in years, though he did remember that back in King’s Landing, when he had a bit of wine in him, he could be quite talkative to her. She reached across the table and grasped his hand again. He watched as her little pink tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip and he was transfixed.

“Do you have somewhere you need to be?” She asked him, looking up at him from beneath her lashes.

“Only right here,” he answered her.

She smiled at him again and he found that he could get used to this. “Finished your drink yet, ser?”

She was teasing him, and he found he liked it. “Not a ser,” he growled at her, as he tilted his pitcher to show her it was empty.

“Can we perhaps go somewhere…quieter?”

As it turned out, somewhere quieter was not her bed chambers, as he had hoped. He followed her into the bitter cold of the Godswood, where only hours before the she-wolf had saved all their necks. Sandor didn’t believe in any gods, old or new, but his lack of faith didn’t make him any more wary of the Godswood. Sandor had enough sense to grab his cloak where it was sitting near him on the bench rather than leave it lying around, but the little bird was without any extra layers.

She shivered a bit as she looked up at the face carved in the tree. Sandor had been about to throw his cloak over his own shoulders when he saw that she was trembling.

_Fucking hells,_ he thought, _first she takes me out here instead of somewhere warmer, now I have to give up my cloak._

Only a bit grudgingly, he wrapped the cloak around her shoulders, unwilling for her to catch her death standing in front of the thrice-damned tree.

She peaked at him over her shoulder. “Thank you.”

He nodded and grumbled, “Remember your own buggering cloak next time.”

Sansa only stared at him, finally turning to him to give him her attention. “There won’t be a next time though, will there?”

And just like that, the mask slipped, and the Lady of Winterfell was gone. Before him was Sansa Stark, maybe not so much his little bird any longer, but still a young woman with a heavy burden. She looked pained and he wanted to snap at her, to ask her what the hells she meant, but he knew.

Instead of snapping, he sighed heavily and asked, “What do you mean?”

“What I said. It is not as though there will ever be another time you and I will be together. Am I correct?”

She was pinning him down with those eyes. He looked away from her, up at the tree, behind her to the hot springs, down at the snow under his boots. She was right, of course. They both knew that after he left, they would never see one another again. Even if by some miracle he survived Gregor, there would be no place for him in the North.

Suddenly, the thought of it _hurt_, cut him straight to the bone. If only he could find the strength to start snapping at her again, though he imagined that it would do nothing to run her off. She knew him. Mayhaps the only person who knew him better was her sister. Sansa knew that all he could do to her was bark and growl, but never truly hurt her.

“Sandor,” she said, and she moved closer to him, a small white hand emerging from his cloak as though she meant to touch him again, but she stopped. “You don’t have to go with them. It’s not your fight. You’ve fought the Dead and survived. You could…leave King’s Landing to Daenerys and her armies.”

He snorted then, hated the fact that she was playing this game with him, as if she didn’t know the true reason he was leaving; because of it, he found some of that bite. “Stupid little bird,” he spat at her. “I don’t give a fuck about the dragon queen’s quarrel with Cersei. You know why I’m going.”

Her eyes flashed when he called her stupid, but other than that, she showed no emotion. “So it’s Gregor then?”

“Always has been.”

Her brow creased in anger and the corners of her pretty mouth turned downward. “Why?”

He scoffed. “You’re a smart girl now, are you not? Why do you think?”

The hand that she still held between them balled into a fist. “I’ve heard he’s dead. I’ve heard that whatever monster is using his name is _not_ your brother.”

Sandor shook his head at her, glaring down into her face as he stepped closer. “Foolish bird. Just because Gregor looks more like a monster now doesn’t change the fact that it’s what he’s _always_ been. I’m going to end him. Should’ve done it years ago.”

Though tall, she had to tilt her head back to look at him now as close as he stood to her. Her cheeks were flushed, though he didn’t know if it was from the cold or her anger. She was _definitely_ angry. He couldn’t imagine why, except that he continued calling her stupid and foolish.

“Ser Brienne said that Ser Jaime told her that Gregor…”

The Hound barked out a laugh and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, an old habit that hardly served any purpose now that she wasn’t looking away from him. “Listening to idle gossip now, little bird? Thought for sure you would have outgrown that.”

She jerked her head out of his hands and slapped at it, which earned her another bark of a laugh. He doubted many people saw the Lady of Winterfell angry and flustered any more. She backed up a step, and at first he thought she meant to run away from him, but she only averted her gaze, staring hard at a spot on the ground.

He thought of leaving her there since she didn’t appear to be in a hurry to leave his company, but then he saw her eyes. They glistened with tears and he was immediately at war with himself, wanting to snatch her up and scream in her face, but also wanting to wrap his arms around her. Instead, he regained the space she had put between them and brushed his thumb along a tear that had escaped.

“I’m not crying because I’m hurt,” she said. “I’m crying because I’m _mad_.”

He rolled his eyes, then gently turned her face back to his. “Aye, I’m good at pissing people off.”

She watched him for a moment, her face frozen in an expression of disappointment. Then, she said, “You realize this is the third cloak you’ve given me?”

“Well, I mean to get it back,” he blurted before he could stop himself, which caused a small lift in one corner of her mouth. “It’s the only cloak I own.”

“I will return it to you,” Sansa said. “I returned the first one, if you’ll remember.”

He remembered well enough the first time he had covered her in a cloak. He had draped it around her to cover her nakedness. Sansa had not actually returned it to him, but one of her maids had. He had remembered thinking that if she wasn’t going to return it herself (so he’d have the excuse to see her), he’d rather her keep it. The second time…

Now he was lost.

She must have noticed that he was struggling to remember the second time, because she complied. “You tore off your cloak the night…the night you left,” she said, quietly. He wondered how hard it was for her to talk about that night. Was it as hard for her to remember it as it was for him?

“Didn’t drape you in a cloak that night, little bird,” he rasped. “Threw it in your floor, if memory serves.”

She nodded. “Yes, and then I crawled beneath it and fell asleep.”

_She what?_ He had no response for that.

“Then, sometime after that, whenever I felt alone or scared, I would sleep beneath it. Unfortunately, when I fled King’s Landing, I left the cloak.” 

“Why keep it? It was covered in blood.”

“It was yours,” she shrugged, though it was barely visible beneath the thickness of his cloak.

He shook his head, unable to understand what she meant by telling him this. “I held a blade to your throat that night, girl,” he growled at her. “And you remember it like it was a bloody song!”

She snarled back at him. “Stop calling me girl! I am a woman grown and whatever else you may call me… _stupid, foolish, little bird_…do not call me girl and treat me like a child!”

“Only children believe in songs,” he grumbled.

“Oh, you’re right about that,” she said hotly. “It’s true enough that I was wrong for wanting what I wanted, but I’m _not_ wrong about you! You’ve been hateful for all these years, but you’ve _never_ hurt me. So stop acting as though you’re some dangerous, rabid dog that I should fear!”

He rolled his eyes at that, his hands coming down to her shoulders, and he shook her. “Wake up, Lady Stark. Don’t you see? I _am _dangerous. Do you know how close you were to death that night? Do you know how close you were to me fucking you bloody? Do you, _girl?”_

She laughed at him. It was not a joyful laugh, but short and caustic. “You were as close to _fucking me bloody _that night as you are right now!”

He showed her his teeth. “Don’t fucking tempt me.”

“Or what?” She asked him through gritted teeth. “There’s nothing you can do to me that’s not already been done, and…” She swallowed heavily, gave a minute shake to her head. “…nothing I would not welcome from _you_.”

She was speaking nonsense and he was tired of it. Hateful words clearly didn’t deter her, and while slapping a hand over her mouth to keep her nonsensical words from spilling out was appealing, and likely more reasonable, instead, he did something else. 

He yanked her to him by the shoulders he still held and pressed his mouth roughly to hers. She whimpered against his mouth at the same time her hand shot up to grab at his jerkin, holding him in place. He had meant for it to be insulting, bruising, entirely unpleasant…

But she parted her lips beneath his and he was gone, a drowning man sinking beneath the surface without a fight. It was her tongue that flicked out to taste him first, and he groaned into her mouth, answering her little whimper. His fingers dug into the fabric of his cloak, silently cursing it that he couldn’t actually feel any of her beneath it, and for a wild moment, he thought of taking it back from her, ripping it away so that he could at the very least feel the shape of her.

She tugged his hands off her shoulders and pulled them around her inside the cloak, slipping them around her waist as she continued to kiss him. Her hands then went to his cheeks, touching the burned side the same as the unburned side. 

Sandor didn’t know how many times he thought about kissing Sansa. At first, he’d only thought about fucking her, with thoughts of kissing coming much later. But the real thing was so much sweeter than what he’d thought it would be, mostly because there was nothing sweet about it. It wasn’t slow or gentle, but hurried and bruising. When he finally got the courage to slip his tongue into her hot mouth, her fingers shot into his hair, her nails raking along his scalp. 

He pressed her closer to him, pushing their hips together, letting her feel what she did to him, and bugger him if she seemed to _like it_. She didn’t shy away from it. His hands ran all over her back and over the curve of her waist, trailing up her ribs, but stopping short of running his fingers along the bottom of her breasts.

Abruptly, she pulled away and he thought, _well that’s it, I went a step too far_. But she was grinning up at him, _grinning_. The Lady of Winterfell looked like a girl again with that mischievous smirk on her lips.

“What?” He growled at her, scowling at the pretty grin she was giving him.

“Sandor,” she whispered, then laughed softly. “You poor fool, but you don’t know Northern traditions, do you?”

“The fuck you talking about?”

Her arms slid from his neck down to his waist and she placed her chin on his chest, looking up at him, amused.

“Think for a moment, Sandor Clegane, what it means to a Northern girl when you drape her in your cloak and kiss her before a Heart Tree.”

It took him more time than he wanted to admit to catch up to her meaning, but then, he’d been kissing Sansa Fucking Stark, so his brain was surely slower than normal. His knee-jerk reaction was to rip away from her and demand what the fuck was wrong with her. But her sky blue eyes were dancing with mirth and she looked genuinely _happy._

“Seven hells,” he muttered instead.

“The Seven have no power here, Clegane,” she told him, trying to act serious, but failing to keep the smile from her voice.

“Good thing for you it’s not binding, eh?”

A crease appeared between her brows and she frowned slightly. “It _is_ binding,” she whispered. “You could at the least give me this. You’re riding off to die soon. It’s not as though you’ll be bound to me for long.”

He pulled away then, but only enough to get some space between them so he could _think_. He searched her face for the lie, but there was none. He gave her another shake. “Sansa, _what are you playing at_?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Maybe I would just like to have something I want _for once in my life_.” She gave him a small smile. “I like it when you use my name. I like it better even than ‘little bird’.”

“You’re mad,” he deadpanned.

“I’m not,” she said calmly. “If it helps you sleep better, you can pretend it isn’t binding.” 

“Sansa…”

“I suppose the only way it would be _truly_ binding is for it to be consummated,” she looked up at him through her lashes and color flooded her cheeks again, though this time it wasn’t anger or the cold. 

He yanked her back against him. “You’ve lost your senses.”

“Perhaps,” she said, laying her head against his chest again. “But the world almost ended last night, so I imagine I’m allowed a little madness.”

Sandor couldn’t think of an argument for that, so he wrapped his arms around her again, put his face in her hair and pretended for a moment that this could be something lasting, something real. He had never thought to hold her, hadn’t even realized how much he wanted to do it. There was certainly a chance that someone would see him and her big brother would chop off his ugly head for daring to touch the Lady of Winterfell, but he quickly made his peace with it, thinking maybe it was a better way to die even than at Gregor’s hands.

“Is there anything I can say to stop you?” She asked after a few minutes.

“No,” he answered. He was too far gone, too obsessed. If he didn’t go after Gregor, the knowledge that the bastard was still out there would gnaw at him until there was nothing left of him but anger. He was angry enough as it was, had spent years with nothing _but_ anger. And, aye, he’d been able to put it aside, learned that there were other things that he could care about. But so long as Gregor lived, the need to _end him_ would always have a hold on him.

“If…” her voice was strained, as though she were holding back tears. “If you beat him, and if you walk away from it…”

“I’ll come back to you,” he said, because what else would he do? Might be there was no place for him in the North if he lived, but there was certainly no place else for him either. And maybe he would suffer through watching her marry some fancy lordling or cunt knight, but at least he could _watch _her, and suddenly that was all that really mattered.

“I’m ready to go to bed now,” she leaned away from him and raised her brows, asking a silent question.

He let go of her and stepped away, letting her lead the way out of the Godswood. The walk to her bed chambers seemed to take forever, but the night spent with her seemed the shortest of his life.


	8. Gendry II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gendry is given a lordship, when all he wants is Arya.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smaller chapter, but hopefully it packs a punch. Arya should be next, but I'm not sure if I'm going to keep going in order. The next few chapters are written, just not sure what order I want to put them in.
> 
> In the meantime, have some angst.

-Gendry-

It was a bit too much for a bastard blacksmith from Flea Bottom. He’d had enough wine, as it was. But the wine had failed to take the edge off the frustration at not finding Arya. She was nowhere to be seen in the Great Hall, and though people were packed inside the hall elbow to elbow, he knew there was no way he would have missed her. 

Gendry had asked the Hound about her, who saw right through Gendry’s bullshit about wanting to thank her. It wasn’t so much that Gendry was trying to get laid again, though that would’ve been nice, but he needed to see her again. He had seen her for a matter of a few seconds, long enough to assure himself she was alive, and then she’d been off and he hadn’t laid eyes on her since. He figured if the Hound didn’t know where she was, probably no one did.

Then. _Then_, the Dragon Queen had all but pulled the rug from beneath his feet. She’d made him Lord of Storm’s End, and suddenly, the orphaned bastard had a name.

_Gendry Baratheon._

Even after Gendry had learned that his father was King Robert, he had never even toyed with the notion of being legitimized, never dared to call himself a Baratheon, even in his own head, but somehow, it sounded good. He’d been a nameless boy from Flea Bottom all his life, thousands of fatherless brothers and sisters sharing the name Waters with him. But now, now he might have a future. He might have a name to give a son.

And so, it was with more desperation than before, that he went to find her.

Somehow, he knew she wouldn’t be in the Godswood. It was the place that she’d saved them all and he knew it would make her uncomfortable. But she’d be too wound out to be holed up in her room, not that he knew where her room was, but he was sure she wasn’t there. He thought she might have taken a ride outside the gates, and groaned as he pushed his way through the crowds, because it was _exactly_ like something she’d do to get away from people.

He had about given up when an arrow whizzed by his head.

His reflexes while drunk were really quite impressive.

“Don’t shoot,” he said, turning to see Arya, knowing that she was the one wielding the bow.

Arya gave him a sheepish smile and began to pull another arrow from her quiver.

“It’s nighttime, it’s freezing, and everyone’s celebrating. You should be celebrating with them,” he told her as he watched her nock the arrow.

“I am celebrating,” she said back.

The arrow lodged itself into a barrel and she began retrieving another arrow. He glanced at her awkwardly, knowing he wanted to tell her that his life had just changed, knowing that she was the only one he really cared about knowing. A part of his brain was telling him that he should slow down and think about his words, but the bigger part of him, the dumb part of him, trudged onward.

“I am too. I’m not Gendry Waters anymore, I’m…Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End, by order of the Queen,” he tried not to vomit in excitement when she smiled at him.

“Congratulations,” she said, grinning up at him.

And he couldn’t stand not touching her for another second, so he grabbed and pressed his lips to hers, which was the only thing he had wanted to do all day. But now, if someone walked in on them, perhaps he wouldn’t lose his head over it.

He broke away from her. “I don’t know how to be lord of anything. I hardly know how to use a fork,” he looked down into those dark eyes, shining happily for _him_. “All I know is that you’re _beautiful_ and I love you and none of it will be worth anything if you’re not with me. So be with me,” he had said it so quickly that he had to pause for a breath. A smile was pulling at his lips because really, was this not all he ever wanted? A name, a family, Arya… it seemed to good to be true, but here she was, in front of him, and no one could stop them from being together now that he was a lord. He knelt down in front of her, belatedly realizing that he was doing this all wrong. “Be my wife,” he said, looking up into that face he loved so much. “Be the lady of Storm’s End”

She stood there, looking down at him, and her face had changed. She had been happy moments ago. She had been glad to see him, he was sure of it. But now…now she looked sad. Everything was moving too slow for him. His words were fast, but everything else seemed to be stuck in molasses. When she knelt down next to him, he saw in her face that she was about to break his heart.

She put her hands on his face and leaned in, and for a moment, when her soft lips met his, he thought maybe he was wrong. They stood together, her hands on his face, his coming to clutch at her elbows, and it all felt so perfect. 

She pulled away, and that smile was back on her lips, the genuine smile that he knew most people would never see. But her eyes…were still sad.

“You’ll be a wonderful lord and any lady would be lucky to have you,” she said.

His heart dropped from his throat to his stomach and he knew, _he knew_, that somewhere along the way he’d fucked it up.

“But I’m not a lady. I never have been. That’s not me,” she turned away from him then and gathered her bow and arrows once again to continue in her own strange celebration.

For a moment, he couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He watched her nock another arrow, loose it, watched it strike the barrel. And then he couldn’t be near her any longer. 

He left quietly, not even looking back to see if _she _looked back. Because it didn’t matter anymore, did it? 

All his life, he had been bitter about being a bastard. It was a lonely life. After his mother had died, without any knowledge of who his father was, Gendry had been completely on his own. He’d never grown very close to the other apprentices at the armory. Tobho Mott had made sure he was fed and clothed, but then he’d handed him over to the Night’s Watch and Gendry found himself more alone than ever.

Until her.

Arya Stark had been the first family he’d had since the death of his mother. He’d fallen in love with her somewhere along the way. Somewhere between eating bugs to survive and sleeping back to back in the mud on the cold earth; somewhere between rolling around in the dirt at Acorn Hall, and seeing her again at Winterfell, she’d plucked his heart right out of his chest. She hadn’t even meant to.

The pain from their last conversation before they were separated came back to him again and again. He was going to leave her, even though she’d stood in front of him and pleaded with him.

_“I can be your family_.”

Why couldn’t she see, he’d asked himself. It would never be good enough for him to make weapons for her brother. It would never be good enough to watch her fall in love with someone else while he hammered away in the forge. He was baseborn and stupid, but for some reason he was also selfish. Gendry knew, even when she was fourteen years old and he was nineteen, that no other girl would ever stir the feelings in him that she did. He knew, even all those years ago, that no woman would ever measure up.

But he would never be with her because he was a bastard with no name.

Gendry had meant to stop the bleeding while he still had enough control to do it. He had meant for it to be a clean break. He hadn’t known how much it would hurt to see tears come into those dark eyes, how much it would cut to watch her storm away to cry in private. He pushed it all down then and told himself that sometimes making adult decisions would hurt at first, but save both of them a lot of pain later on.

And now, well now, he was _so drunk_. He hadn’t thought of anything but her all day. When Daenerys Targaryen had stopped him in the middle of a celebration to give him a name, all he could think about in his drunken stupor was _now I can have her, no one can stop me_.

Except her, of course. She stopped him soundly enough. And that was the tragedy of this whole situation, really. She only wanted him when they couldn’t be together; and when he was actually worthy of her, she wanted nothing to do with him. She had offered to be his family years ago, but he supposed she’d changed her mind. Abruptly, he slammed his fist into a stone wall, then howled in pain, realizing he might have broken his hand.

_Idiot, now I’ve gone and compromised my livelihood_, he thought, and then remembered, _well I suppose not, since I’m a bloody lord now_. He sunk down against the wall, arms propped on his knees, opening and closing his sore hand.

“Lad?” Gendry’s head snapped up to see he’d been found. Davos stood a few feet to his left, hands behind his back, looking at him curiously.

“Aye?” He said, a bit breathlessly, the pain in his hand intensifying rather than easing.

Davos’s blue eyes darted down to his bloody fist, then back up to Gendry’s face. “Have an accident?”

“No, it was intentional,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut as he felt a headache coming on.

He heard a shuffling of feet and the next thing he knew Davos had dropped down against the wall at his side. He produced a wine skin and offered it to Gendry, who shook his head a bit too violently. 

Davos chuckled. “Too much to drink then?”

“Something like that,” Gendry replied, rubbing at his sore knuckles. He wasn’t sure what was worse just now, the pain in his hand or the pain in his heart.

“That from a fight?” Davos asked, nodding at the bloodied hand.

“Fight with a stone wall,” Gendry said flatly.

Davos nodded and discarded the wine skin between them. He’d never been much of a drinker, Gendry had learned.

“This about a woman?” Davos asked, and Gendry cursed him for his intuitiveness.

“Might be,” Gendry mumbled.

“Mind if I ask her name?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve lost her and that’s that.”

“I’m sorry, lad. At least you have your health and now…a place to go home to.”

Gendry nodded as though that were a good thing, as though losing Arya hadn’t dimmed every bit of good news he had been given this evening. “Aye, at least there’s that.”


	9. Arya III/Sandor III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya and Sandor leave for King's Landing.

-Arya-

Arya woke as the sun began to bleed against the horizon and looked out her window at the pinks and oranges and greys of the early morning. She’d seen plenty of sunrises, but had never appreciated them. Perhaps she had never truly appreciated being alive, at least not for a long time. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact she had just faced death and would soon face another incarnation of death in the form of Cersei Lannister.

It all came down to her, really. Arya was running out of people to kill who had wronged her, but the anger was still there. A queer feeling she vaguely recognized as fear crept into her bones, and she realized that it wasn’t fear of death that bothered her, but the fear that taking Cersei’s life may not stifle the rage she felt.

If she had been able to kill Joffrey or Tywin or Ilyn Payne, perhaps those deaths would have blunted her rage. And even though obliterating the Freys had felt like justice, it didn’t bring her any peace. Robb was still dead. Her mother was still dead. Her father was still dead. Rickon had died too, and Sansa had killed the Bolton bastard before Arya could get to him.

Arya pondered if killing Cersei _and_ the Mountain might make her feel better, but she knew she’d never get the opportunity for that. The Mountain would likely kill her if she got anywhere near him, but she imagined that the Hound wouldn’t allow her the chance to take him down. Sandor had told her long ago that she might as well get in line because he had his own fantasies about ending his brother.

When Arya had finished packing what little belongings she would need on the road, she made her way out of the keep and onto the walkway overlooking the training yard. She jogged down the stairs and made her way into the stables to ready her horse for travel. She shook off the stable boy’s offer of assistance and rolled her eyes when he spluttered his “m’lady” and blushed deeply after she had winked at him and told him she could handle it.

As she led her horse from the stables, she noted how empty the training yard appeared. Normally, there would be at least some activity by now. But Jon had already taken his army and left days ago. Arya had meant to leave before him, truly, but the knowledge that she may never return caused her to delay several days. She had meant to spend more time with Sansa, with Bran though he was strange now; she had even meant to find Gendry, hoping to find some of the easy company that he had provided her all those years ago. 

But Sansa was preoccupied with inventories of food stores, sending messages to Northern Lords, and disappearing in the middle of the day. Arya had always been good at finding her, but it seemed that when she wanted to, Sansa could find a hiding spot that not even Arya could uncover. And Bran…well, he wasn’t truly Bran anymore anyway. The few times that Arya had sought him out, hoping to get a glimpse of her brother in case she never saw him again, he was too deep into his own thoughts to provide company.

It was not as though Arya craved the company. Though she had always been a very social child, she recognized that this was no longer the case. She preferred solitude now. It seemed she had been too long without the care of another human and now she just didn’t need that connection.

It bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

_We’re all different_, she told herself. They had all changed, but Arya wondered if it was for the better. Jon alone still seemed to be himself. He was still brave, and honorable, and brooding. But the rest of the Starks…

_But Jon isn’t a Stark_, she reminded herself, his Godswood confession from days ago plaguing her. _And it may very well get him killed._

It had been a strange couple of weeks, to be sure. Gendry’s proposal of marriage had unbalanced her, and though she had given him a truthful answer about how she felt, she couldn’t ignore the pang of regret when she thought of him. He had ignored her the few times that they had been in the same room together. At one of the many war councils, Daenerys had informed him that he would not be asked to join her army in King’s Landing. She needed her faithful supporters alive and running their kingdoms from their seats, and because Gendry had no experience at command, it made sense that she would send him to Storm’s End to wait out the war.

Arya had also noticed the morning after the celebratory feast that Sansa had been wearing a tattered old cloak that was so large that it dragged the ground. Arya had been perplexed for only a short time, however, and had put most of the pieces together. When Sansa and Clegane both disappeared at odd times, Arya was the first person to notice, being one of the few people who often sought out both of them. Arya had wanted to prod Sansa on just what was going on between them, but she was worried Sansa would bring up Gendry. Arya was already spending way too much time thinking about him and not enough time thinking of her plan to kill Cersei, so she let Sansa have her secret.

Jon’s confession about being a Targaryen weighed on her most heavily. She felt no different about Jon. He had always been her brother and he always would be. The revelation that Ned Stark hadn’t fathered a bastard only stung of betrayal slightly when Arya thought of her father. She had gotten over it quickly, accepting that Ned Stark had been trying to protect Jon. As for Jon’s Targaryen side, it was easily overlooked because he seemed more Stark than the rest of the living Starks combined. No, the problem wasn’t that Jon’s secret caused his family to view him differently. The problem was Daenerys.

The coldness that could be witnessed between the King in the North and the Dragon Queen unsettled Arya. Daenerys quite clearly knew what was going on and the information had driven a chasm between them. All of the warmth that had been shared between the two rulers before the Long Night had disappeared. Jon still looked on Daenerys with affection, Arya noticed, if not also a bit of sadness. But Daenerys’s public interactions with him seemed rife with tension. 

And the news that had arrived the previous day worried Arya more than anything. They’d had a raven explaining that Daenerys had been accosted by the Iron Fleet on the coast of the Crownlands. Daenerys had lost a second dragon and her advisor. Unable to avoid Sansa anymore, Arya had found her in her room, and without saying a word, Sansa seemed to know what troubled her.

“She’s unstable,” Sansa said told her quietly. “And now I’ve done something incredibly risky.”

_That_ confession had surprised Arya.

“What do you mean?” Arya asked.

“I told Tyrion,” she said.

Arya didn’t have to ask what Sansa had told him. There was really only one piece of information that could have been revealed that would worry Sansa so.

“Why?” Arya asked, trying to keep her voice even. They had promised Jon that nothing would be said. Jon wanted nothing to do with his Targaryen heritage; he’d made that much very clear. 

Sansa had met her eyes and flinched. “Because Jon is the rightful ruler. It doesn’t matter if he wants it or not, Arya. He’s _good_. He’s honorable. He puts everyone before himself. That’s the kind of ruler that should be sitting on the throne. And if the other option is some mad queen who enjoys burning people, why _wouldn’t_ I let people know the truth?”

Arya’s initial anger faded a bit. She had to remind herself that Sansa wasn’t doing this for the sole purpose of causing chaos. Jon was indeed a better option than Daenerys, and the fact that he was the legitimate heir to the throne should have made the decision to pass on that information a very simple one.

But that had been before Daenerys had lost her another advisor and another dragon.

As Arya passed through the gates of Winterfell, she wondered what she would find when she reached her destination. She was worried that Daenerys would do something to her brother, but she had no way of knowing. Her thoughts were interrupted as she approached the road. A tall figure on a black horse was making his way down the road, chewing on some dried meat. Arya moved her horse down the hill.

Clegane noticed the movement and looked up, then rolled his eyes.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

“On your own?” Arya asked him, knowing that he was.

“Not anymore.” His eyes shifted back toward Winterfell. “I don’t like crowds.”

“Me neither.”

The Hound snorted. “Why not? They all love you now. You’re the big hero.”

“Don’t like heroes,” Arya said softly.

“It must have felt good sticking a knife in that horned fucker.”

“Felt better than dying.” They were silent for a moment, then she asked, “You’re heading to King’s Landing?”

“I have some unfinished business.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t plan on coming back.” That surprised Arya, given her knowledge that he’d been spending time with Sansa.

“Neither do I,” she answered.

“Gonna leave me to die again if get hurt?”

“Probably,” she told him with a straight face.

His deep rumbling laugh forced a smile onto her lips though, and she shook her head in amusement.

“Never thought I’d be willing to travel with you again,” she told him.

“And why not?” He gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Am I not the ideal companion?”

“At least we have separate horses,” Arya noted, remembering that, for a time, she’d had to sit in front of him atop his vicious horse. “I don’t know what was worse, your horse’s attitude or yours.” She thought for a moment, then added, “Or your stench.”

“Clean now,” he rumbled.

“Yes, I’m sure that Sansa made certain you were well-bathed and cared for before you set out,” she turned to him, all nonchalance and matter-of-fact.

He glowered at her. “The fuck you mean?”

“I’m not an idiot,” she told him. “You know this.”

“Nor am I,” he said, and he _smiled_ at her. A horrible smile, really, but a smile all the same. 

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What?”

Sandor only shrugged and kicked Stranger into a trot. Arya’s mood now soured, she was left to wonder how much he knew about Gendry or if he was just fucking with her.

***

-Sandor-

Riding to King’s Landing with Arya had not been the distraction Sandor had hoped it might be. For all his grumpy demeanor about having company on the road, he had been hopeful that the wolf-bitch might keep his mind off her sister. He’d had no such luck. No matter what he did, he couldn’t push her from his mind. 

Sansa Stark was with him throughout the day, though he rode further and further from Winterfell. He found himself licking his burned mouth, just to see if there was a lingering taste of her. His fingers itched with the memory of her silken skin beneath his hands. When he closed his eyes, he saw the playful smile on her lips from that night in the Godswood. He could see the brilliant blue of those eyes that had looked at him without fear, but instead with affection. He could see her auburn hair fanned out on the pillow as she lay beneath him.

She’d been shy, at first, and he had thought that perhaps she didn’t fully want what she’d asked for. But once her clothes had come off, he’d learned the real reason for her moment of hesitation. The scars covering her entire body made him feel murderous. He hadn’t been able to speak, so badly had he shaken with rage. She hadn’t been afraid of him, but when he saw that she’d cast her eyes down in shame, Sandor had dropped to his knees in front of her.

His arms went around her waist and he laid his head against her belly. “I’d kill him again, if I could. But only because he hurt you.” He was weak, he realized. Hot tears spilled from his eyes, but he didn’t give a fuck. He was past that. He pressed his mouth to her belly again and again, over a new scar each time. 

“Sandor,” she’d whispered, sounding so uncertain.

“Why?” He’d rasped in between putting his lips to a silvery scar on her hip bone.

“He wanted to destroy me. He told me one night that the only beauty I’d have left was my face. I didn’t even _care_ about being beautiful, I just wanted him to stop hurting me.”

“He failed,” Sandor told her fiercely. He’d stood up then, tilted her face to his and growled against her lips, “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Nothing, _nothing_, he could do to you will change that.”

The couple of weeks he’d had with Sansa passed too quickly. There were times on the road when Sandor wondered what the bloody fuck he was doing riding in the opposite direction of where he’d left her. But the compulsion to get to Gregor was too great. He couldn’t leave it alone, so he rode on towards King’s Landing, wishing Arya would do more to distract him from the ever-growing hole forming in his chest. 

Sandor had thought that the weeks-long trip from Winterfell to King’s Landing with the she-wolf at his side might have been like old times. In some ways, it was. They still annoyed one another to no end. They moved around one another with a familiarity akin to old comrades. They bickered about inconsequential things. They shared food and wine.

But she was certainly quieter than she’d been a few years’ prior. Whatever Arya Stark had been through between leaving him to die and showing up back at Winterfell, it had changed her markedly. He almost missed her constant chatter and scathing remarks. Now, she rode next to him, grey eyes seemingly empty, face set in stone. 

This was not the same Arya Stark he’d traveled with before.

Sandor had noted when they first reunited that she seemed quieter, but he’d half-expected her to warm back up to him and start fussing at him again at some point. She didn’t.

He wondered if the wolf-bitch was like this with that young, newly-made lord that liked her so well. That dumb cunt had been making eyes at the she-wolf for weeks. More than that, Sandor had watched their interactions when Dondarrion had captured him and stole his gold. The she-wolf had been ready to tear him apart with her hands on account of her butcher’s boy, but the Baratheon bastard had stepped in, tackling her to the ground to keep her from picking a fight she would surely lose.

Not that Sandor would have hurt her. Even then, fresh from surviving the worst night of his life, he’d decided that he would live by his own code since he no longer had a master to dictate what he did with his sword. He wouldn’t harm skinny little girls, even one as mean and wild as Arya Stark. Too many young girls had seen abuse at the hands of brutes, and though he might’ve knocked out the wolf-bitch to keep her from pestering him, he wouldn’t have done her any true harm.

Every once in a while, she would offer him a glimpse of the old Arya. They’d be sitting around a camp fire and he’d catch her studying him intently in that new, cold way of hers.

“Why does Sansa like you so much now?” She had asked him once.

“Fuck if I know,” he’d replied. He wasn’t going to talk about his brief love affair with Sansa Stark with her shithead of a sister.

Then, realizing that Arya likely knew more than she was letting on, he decided to give her a hard time as well. “Why does the new cunt of Storm’s End like _you_ so much?” 

Her jaw tightened and those storm cloud eyes flashed at him and he had to fight the urge to smirk at her. He didn’t expect her to answer him and didn’t much need an answer. But she spoke to him anyway, surprising him.

“Because he’s stupid,” she muttered, sounding more like her old self. “Asked me to marry him.”

_Poor dumb cunt_, Sandor thought, without any true pity. Did the boy not know her at all?

“Didn’t know what he was asking for,” Sandor remarked, shaking his head.

“He’s just so stupid,” she repeated, staring into the fire. But for the first time since they’d left, Sandor saw _something_. Because he didn’t particularly give a fuck about reading people or deciphering one’s feelings, he didn’t know what it was. Sadness, regret, longing? He didn’t know. He could barely recognize some of those emotions in himself. Outside of anger and misery, any other emotions that struck him were so foreign that he had trouble putting a name to them.

_Except when it comes to _her, he thought- and not the “her” currently sitting across from him.

Sandor let the topic die after that. He wasn’t interested in having some bloody heart to heart with the she-wolf. She may kill him out of spite if he tried.

One day, as they were stopped at a stream, curiosity struck him so suddenly that he blurted. “Did you turn the lad down when he asked you?”

Arya, who had been knelt down at the water’s edge sipping from the stream, spat water all over herself and coughed. She glared up at him and snapped, “What?”

Sandor schooled his expression into one of nonchalance, all while cursing himself for bringing it up. He shrugged. “Just wondered if you took Lord Cunt up on his offer.”

“Of course not,” she spat at him, standing abruptly and stomping away from the stream. “What an idiotic question.”

Sandor supposed she was right about it being an idiotic question, but the idea didn’t sound so ludicrous when he looked at the situation from an outsider’s perspective. The second daughter of a great house was a valuable ally for a newly-made lord who could use friends. Even Sandor knew that it was potentially a very good political match. And besides, how many newly-made lords from Flea Bottom could say that they had traveled the Riverlands with a noble girl. The two of them would have had it better than many marriage matches. Many nobles didn’t meet their intended until the day of the wedding.

“You know the boy from your time with Dondarrion?” Sandor asked, unable to stop himself.

Arya shook her head. “Goes back further than that,” she said quietly as she unraveled her horse’s reins from a tree branch. “The two of us left King’s Landing together after my father was beheaded. We traveled with the Night’s Watch. We were captured…” Arya paused here, evidently for dramatic effect as she glared at him, then finished, “…by your brother and his men. We were taken to Harrenhal where we thought every single day that we would die. We escaped, came across the Brotherhood…”

Sandor knew much of the rest of it. The Baratheon bastard had mentioned getting sold by the Brotherhood to the Red Woman. But if Arya had been with the boy from the time Ned Stark lost his head until about the time that Sandor himself had snatched her up hoping to get a reward for her safe return, then she had traveled with the boy for well over a year, perhaps closer to two.

Around the time they entered the Crownlands, Arya said to him. “You said you weren’t planning on returning North…”

“Aye,” he said, wondering where she was going with this.

She didn’t look at him though they rode side by side. He scrutinized her expression as she let the silence drag out a bit. 

“What about Sansa?” She asked finally.

“What about her?”

Arya slowly turned her face toward him, piercing him with a knowing look. “_What about Sansa?_”

“The little bird is well protected,” he said, trying to evade this topic. “She has her sworn shield. She has Jaime Fucking Lannister. She has the whole of the North and the Vale at her back…”

“You truly won’t return to her?” There was an edge to her voice now that hadn’t been there before.

Sandor’s temper flared and he urged Stranger forward then pulled him around quickly to block Arya’s path. “Speak plainly, wolf-bitch,” he growled. “I’m in no mood to play games.”

“She loves you,” Arya growled back in a show of emotion that Sandor wasn’t used to seeing from her. “From some mad reason, the Lady of Winterfell has a soft spot for _you_, of all people, and you’ve just abandoned her!”

Sandor rolled his eyes. “Abandoned her? She belongs in the North and I have unfinished business here. She has plenty of protectors. Doesn’t need an old, wounded dog.” 

“She may not _need_ you to protect her, but what about that promise you made to her in the Godswood?”

_How in the Seven Hells…_

“What promise?” He growled. “I make no vows, you know that.”

“Maybe to no one else,” Arya forged on.

Truth was, Sandor wasn’t sure exactly how binding that little “ceremony” in the Godswood was. He had felt a bit as though he’d been tricked into it, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell Sansa that, lest she think he didn’t want it. But was a Godswood marriage binding if the groom didn’t know exactly what he was doing? And how the fuck did the wolf-bitch know?

As though she read his mind, Arya said, “I saw her wearing your cloak several weeks ago. You were training in the yard and she stood on the walkway. It was early and Sansa was wearing a cloak _much_ too large for her. I’m not stupid. She never said anything to me though.”

“Wasn’t your business.”

“She’s my sister!” She said indignantly. “And if you married her and then abandoned her…”

“Why bring this up now, she-wolf, hmm? We’ve been on the road for weeks…”

“I want to know if you plan to go back to her. You told me that you didn’t plan on returning, and neither do I, but…I thought maybe you said that because…”

“Because I plan to die?” He offered flatly.

Arya’s brow furrowed and she gave a tight nod.

He could feel his teeth grind together as he debated on whether or not to answer her. Finally, he said, “If I live through it, there’s not a man who could stop me from getting back to her. Gregor is the only thing that could stand in my way.”

Arya was quiet for a moment, studying his face. “And you think he _will _stop you from going back?”

Sandor gave her a nod. “Aye. I know my limits and I know Gregor.”

Arya shook her head in confusion. “Then why do this? If you know you can’t beat him, why seek him out?”

He barked a laugh. “Tell me, wolf-bitch, has the odds being stacked against you ever slowed you down?”

The corner of her lips twitched ever so slightly, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “No,” she admitted.

“Then you have your answer,” he wheeled his horse back around. “Now let’s get going before your bloody brother’s army gets in the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing has been re-written about 5 times and I'm still not sure if I like it. I like parts, but... *sigh* I think I'm more bothered at the fact that I know what's coming (and so do all of you) and I'm dreading it SO BAD. Ugh.
> 
> Also, obviously this story only covers 4 POVs, but I've thought about doing a separate story along these same lines from other characters' POVs that aren't included in this one. I just didn't want 12 POVs in one story, so after I'm done with this, I may play around with it through Jaime's perspective, and Brienne's, and Jon's, etc....
> 
> Anyway, sorry this took so long, but the fact that I'm about to kill off my favorite character is making me dig in my heels big time, even if I'm not actually the one who did it. This story is tv canon and that hasn't changed, so *spoiler alert*, our favorite grouchy pants is not going to make it :(


	10. Sansa III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa reflects on her brief time with Sandor.

-Sansa-

With so many dead, the issue of enough food was not quite as pressing as it had been before, though the armies had taken a considerable portion of the supplies. Sansa felt guilty for the relief she felt, and guiltier still knowing that not as many hungry mouths would be returning home. She confessed as much to Brienne one day.

“A quick death would be preferable to a slow starvation, my lady,” Brienne told her.

Sansa marveled at Brienne’s strength. Had Sansa not known her so well, the hurt and betrayal she must have been feeling would not have been evident. When Jaime Lannister had left, Brienne hadn’t curled up in bed and cried all day, as Sansa had felt like doing. Instead, she went about her duties as Sansa’s guard, as well as commanding some of the men at arms who had been left behind. 

Sansa had noticed the sadness in her eyes, but hadn’t put all of the pieces together until Bran had spilled it to her. One day, when Sansa was visiting him, he had been in an uncharacteristically chatty mood. Though his voice lacked any inflection, and his dark eyes seemed flat, Sansa sat and listened to him as he told her what he knew.

It had started when Sansa had mentioned seeing Gendry and had let slip that Arya was fond of him. Bran likely already knew as much. But then he’d surprised her and said, “He asked her to marry him. A Baratheon in love with a Stark. It does seem fitting.”

Sansa had startled at that information. “He proposed to her?!”

Bran only looked at her calmly. “Yes.”

“When?”

“As soon as he was granted a lordship.”

Sansa waited for more information, but when it didn’t seem forthcoming, she said, “And what did she say?”

“She declined,” Bran said in his usual monotone, his lack of enthusiasm at odds with the gossip he was providing.

“Oh,” Sansa said, deflating a bit. “I thought that perhaps…but then I suppose I should have known better…”

“He asked wrong,” Bran said.

Sansa’s features pinched together as she tried to understand what he meant. “He asked…wrong?” 

Bran said, “He asked her to be his lady.”

_Fool_, Sansa thought. Had he not known her better than that? _Seven hells, I could have told him she would say no to that._

“I can’t believe she didn’t tell me he’d asked,” Sansa said, pouting a bit.

“You did not tell her about your marriage either,” Bran droned. Sansa thought she may have heard a bit of accusation in there though.

“My marriage?” She scoffed. “Everyone knows about my marriages. They were both tragedies.”

Bran looked away from the view of the Godswood he’d been staring at through the window for several minutes and cut his eyes at her. “I am speaking of your marriage to Sandor Clegane.”

It was as though ice water had been dumped down the back of her dress. Sansa shivered and glanced up to meet his stare. _I should have known_.

“You…know about that too, then?” Sansa asked, dropping her eyes back to her lap and smoothing out minute wrinkles in her dress.

Bran was quiet for several seconds, which prompted Sansa to peek back up at him to find a small smile on his mouth. “You married in front of the Heart Tree. If I saw nothing else, I would have known about _that_.”

Feeling chagrined, Sansa gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “It was no one’s business,” she insisted, knowing that there would be multiple people who would argue with that statement. 

“And you’re afraid he will die,” Bran said.

Heat rushed to her face as she felt a flash of anger. “I did not marry him intending he would be a secret that I could discard once he died and then cheerily go on to marry someone else,” Sansa hissed.

“No,” Bran agreed. “But you did keep it quiet because you wanted something of your own without Jon telling you how wrong it was. And if Sandor dies, then Jon will have nothing to fuss about.”

“He won’t die,” Sansa whispered, but she could hear the doubt in her own voice. And then, she asked, “Will he?”

“I don’t know,” Bran said.

_Of course not,_ Sansa thought scathingly. _The one thing I need to know more than anything else, and you can’t tell me_.

Bran’s eyes widened a bit, and then he blinked several times. “Jaime Lannister is no longer here.”

Sansa stood up suddenly. “What? Has he gone to join Jon?”

“No,” Bran said, frowning a bit. “He has left to rejoin Cersei.”

Sansa’s hands curled into fists at her side. “He has betrayed us.”

“No,” Bran said. “I don’t think so. I think…he just wants to save her. To get her out.”

Sansa shook her head. “No. _NO!_ She deserves to die for what she’s done to our family. I hope…I hope he is too late. How could he?”

Bran only watched her calmly, and then said, “You need to speak with Brienne. They were lovers, if only for a couple of weeks.”

Sansa’s eyes went wide at the information and for a moment, she just stared at her brother. He nodded as if to reaffirm what he had just told her.

“Brienne and Jaime? Why? Why would she…”

“She loves him,” Bran said. It was so strange to hear Bran speak of love when he seemed detached from everything now. 

“And he left her?” The surges of anger she had been feeling these last few months were new to Sansa, but it was far better than being helpless. “That bastard…”

“You should speak with Brienne,” Bran said again. “She…ah…does not have many friends.”

So Sansa had found Brienne later that day, and once she had gotten her alone, she had broached the subject as carefully as she could.

“The Kingslayer…Ser Jaime…he has left Winterfell?”

Brienne visibly winced, and then nodded. “Yes, my lady. He left late last night.”

Sansa wanted to be careful about this subject, especially if it was something that hurt Brienne, but at the same time she wanted to know all the details. “Did he tell you why he left?”

Brienne’s blue eyes lowered, staring at a spot on the floor. “He went back to his sister, my lady.”

Sansa tried to get a grip on the anger that threatened to overtake her again, but it was a lost cause. “Jaime Lannister came all this way to fight for the living and then _turned around to go back to Cersei_?” It came out through gritted teeth, and Sansa registered that she was not much acting like a lady at that moment.

Brienne met her eyes and Sansa noted the pain in those blue depths. “He defeated himself, my lady. He didn’t go back to fight. He went back to die with her. He knows she can’t win and I think…I think he doesn’t know how to live knowing that she will die.”

Sansa was disgusted at Jaime Lannister’s actions, but she fought to hide it when she was faced with the knowledge that Brienne held some affection for him. _He doesn’t deserve you_, Sansa wanted to tell her. Instead, she said, “He is only proving correct what everyone thought about him.” 

Brienne’s jaw tightened and her eyes flashed. “Begging your pardon, but you are wrong, Lady Sansa. Ser Jaime _isn’t_ the man that you think he is. He’s better. The problem is that he sees in himself what everyone else has made him rather than seeing the truth.”

Sansa could have stood there and argued with her about it all day, but the resolve with which Brienne challenged her on this made it all seem redundant. She would never understand why Brienne held a soft spot for the Kingslayer. The truth was that Jaime had pushed a ten-year-old boy from a window and shattered his legs and spine. The truth was that, before that, he’d murdered his own king. How many horrible things had the Kingslayer done because his sister controlled his puppet strings? But Sansa could see that there was no convincing Brienne otherwise, and that though Jaime leaving had hurt her, that she was still loyal to him in some way.

Instead, Sansa said, “Why do you love him?”

Brienne’s sharp intake of breath proved that she had not thought anyone knew. Truthfully, Sansa would not have known if not for Bran.

“He’s a good man,” Brienne said simply. “If I’m the only one willing to see it, that’s fine. I know who he is, likely better than he knows himself.”

Since that day, they had not spoken again of Jaime Lannister, though Sansa could see a difference in Brienne, a subtle sadness that troubled her. She wondered if Brienne could see her own pain, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to open that wound. It was difficult enough for Sansa to wear her lady’s mask day after day, when all she wanted was her husband.

Sandor had teased her about “trapping” him into the marriage, but Sansa felt no guilt over it. He had come to her bed readily enough that she doubted he had any true issues with marriage. Sansa had not planned to marry the fearsome Hound in an impromptu Godswood ceremony, but once the pieces had fallen into place, Sansa wouldn’t have dreamed of stopping it. It was too perfect: the cloak, the kiss, the Heart Tree… she was thankful that Northern weddings were simple.

She had never planned to marry again, would have dug in her heels had anyone suggested it. But when she found herself wrapped in his arms and in his cloak, though she could have kept quiet because Sandor didn’t know any better, she found it was one of the few things she truly wanted. Under no other circumstances would Sansa have gotten to choose her husband, and it was this small victory that pushed her to reveal it to him.

Love had not been the foremost factor in her hasty decision to take Sandor as her husband. She had been seizing an opportunity to control something that she had previously been denied a choice. Sansa was aware of the affection she felt for him, aware that he felt some affection for her as well. She had not associated their Godswood union with love. 

At least, not when it took place.

Sansa had stopped believing in the love made famous in songs years before. She didn’t know if Joffrey had beat if out of her, or if Ramsay had been the final nail in the coffin. She only remembered that one day she acknowledged that she would never feel what her mother had felt for her father. Though she had wanted it more than anything at one time, she released that dream much easier than she thought possible. 

When Sansa had begun dreaming of Sandor during her time in the Vale, it had taken her a while to realize that it was lust she felt for him. But the more the dreams came to her, the more she realized that she craved the feelings he delivered in the dreams. She had been terrified the night that the Blackwater burned, but over and over again, she found herself reliving the image of his huge body hovering above her own. And the kiss…

Sansa still found it difficult to believe that the kiss had been imagined. She had believed it to be real right up to the moment that Sandor had laughed at her and informed her that she dreamed it up.

“I did not!” Sansa had protested, poking a finger into his rib as they had lain together.

“You did,” he rumbled, rubbing the spot she’d poked him. “Sometimes you’re still that bloody little bird, romanticizing everything.”

“You were drunk,” she reminded him.

“I smelled wine on your breath as well,” he told her.

Cersei had made her drink more than she was used to, it was true, but she had felt very clear-headed by the time she had returned to her room. “I remember everything,” she insisted.

“Aye, and then some,” he’d told her, shifting his eyes to her. “I didn’t kiss you, Sansa. I wanted to do that and more. But I would remember if I kissed you.”

They had bickered some more about it until Sansa accepted that she had made it up. It took some close examining on her part, trying to piece together what she remembered of a kiss that didn’t happen compared to the kisses she had recently received. It mostly came down to Sandor being a much better kisser than what she had imagined him being and when she told him so, he laughed at her again.

It was lying in bed with him during those stolen moments before he left her that she realized she was in love with him. It had been so unexpected that when she grasped what she was feeling for him, she’d had to take a moment to collect herself. It had happened as she was lying in bed, waiting for him to join her. He had stripped off all his clothes, cursed the cold, then slid between the furs and pulled her close to him.

Sansa had gotten lost in his kiss. His fingers in her hair, his tongue flicking out to taste her lips, his strong arms crushing her to him as if she was his anchor to the world – all of it had culminated in a feeling so strong that Sansa could no longer ignore it or push it aside. And it wasn’t lust.

Her eyes had flown open and she’d stilled, causing him to stop kissing her and look at her with curious grey eyes. Sansa tried to piece it together, to understand how and why it had happened. She hadn’t meant to submit to the depth of feeling that had overtaken her. She’d wanted comfort, a bit of happiness, to feel wanted perhaps before he rode off forever. 

“What is it?” His gruff voice had pulled her back into the real world.

“I love you,” she’d whispered, her throat clogged with emotion.

His one eyebrow had first shot up in surprise and then dipped down along with the rest of his face in a scowl.

“No need to pretend,” his growl had sent shivers down her spine, but not because she feared him. “You got me, didn’t you? No need to lie and manipulate…”

She’d shoved him off of her then and sprang from the bed, tears stinging her eyes as she pointed a finger at him accusingly. “Don’t do that with me. Don’t act as though you know how I feel. I _know_ what I feel. Not even you can invalidate it.”

Sansa had dressed in a nightgown and thrown a robe over it, then stomped from the room, leaving her very confused husband speechless.

Sansa had not mentioned it again, and he had continued to come to her bed for the next couple of nights before he left her. Now she wished she hadn’t stormed out of the room, but she had been beyond aggravated that he would call her a liar. Her anger at him and her discovery that she was well and truly in love with him had kept her from having a clear enough head to show him that she was telling the truth about her feelings.

Sandor had left her a couple of days later. He hadn’t said good-bye that morning. She had been awake when she felt the bed shift as his weight left the mattress. He had dressed quietly. She kept her eyes closed, unwilling to face his departure, but also hoping he would “wake” her or perhaps press a kiss to her brow before leaving.

He didn’t. He left the room without looking back and Sansa had emptied her tears onto her pillow. 

So she waited for word of what would happen. She was worried about Jon and Arya, but somehow she felt that they would be all right. Both of them had an uncanny ability to survive the worst of situations. But Sandor had chosen an impossible task, and Sansa was sick to death with the knowledge that he couldn’t survive it. 

Had Sandor fought a living Gregor, Sansa would bet that he’d win. She remembered the Hand’s Tourney, so many years ago now, when Gregor had tried to hack away at his little brother with all his might, while Sandor had only defended himself and Loras Tyrell.

Now, though, Sansa knew that something wasn’t right with Gregor Clegane. There had been so many stories about his change in appearance, his inability to feel pain. Sandor couldn’t hurt a monster who could feel no pain, and killing him would be more difficult than ever.

“My lady,” Brienne said, interrupting one of Sansa’s frequent bouts of moodiness that were becoming more and more common. “The mid-day meal is about to be served. May I escort you?”

Sansa nodded, though the thought of food turned her stomach. She was aware she had not been eating well since Sandor and Arya had left. Brienne took notice as well, constantly reminding her that she needed to keep up her strength and could not afford to fall ill. Sansa knew she was right, but she had moments when the despair was so crushing that she wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed and sleep it all away. The exhaustion she felt was likely due to her poor diet as of late. 

As Sansa sat at the table, she looked at her food with disgust. _The nausea causes the poor diet, and the poor diet causes the exhaustion_, she thought to herself. _And the nausea is due to worrying myself sick about my siblings and husband_.

A thought struck her as she sat there staring at her plate, just as unexpected as the comprehension that she had fallen in love. She felt her breathing go shallow and her eyes darted to her companions. Brienne was focused singularly on her meal. Bran, on her other side, was looking at her as though he knew something that she did not. His eyes widened a bit, then he looked away.

As discreetly as she could, Sansa rubbed her left upper arm, allowing her right forearm to press against her breast. She felt the tenderness that she had been ignoring and dropped her hands into her lap as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Her breasts were tender. Her tummy was often unsettled. She was bone-tired all of the time. And most importantly, Sansa had not bled for some six weeks.

Her hand flattened against her stomach and she felt happy and completely distraught all at once.

She was carrying Sandor Clegane’s child in her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I updated both of my stories on the same day! It's got me feeling very productive :)
> 
> Also, I know there are some people that totally called this and so it's not unexpected, but I was so excited to write it! I mean, what SanSan fan DOESN'T want to write about SanSan babies?


	11. Sandor IV/Arya IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandor talks sense into Arya, then Arya talks some sense into Jon.

-Sandor-

Sandor and the she-wolf barely made it through the gates before they closed. The two of them pushed through the horde of people crowding the streets. Sandor wore a cowl to keep his face somewhat hidden. He didn’t need any unnecessary trouble from the City Watch or any Lannister guards who thought it would be brave to pick a fight with the Hound. He strode purposely through the crowd, pushing his way through without a word. Neither he nor Arya had any trouble navigating through the masses – his huge size tended to part the throngs of people in his way, and Arya’s small body allowed her to slip through tight spaces.

The Dragon Queen had done some considerable damage to the Red Keep already. The walls were crumbling away from the structure, crashing to the ground below. As a result, waves of frightened bystanders were running in the opposite direction that Sandor was headed. He pushed at anyone in his way, his singular focus to get to Gregor before the dragon could.

Arya did not part from his side. They both knew that wherever Gregor was, Cersei was likely with him. Gregor was Cersei’s best chance of survival. Sandor’s quarrel was not with Cersei. He didn’t care if she lived or died. But he wondered if he would need to kill Gregor first so that the she-wolf could get to Cersei. He didn’t know if he’d live long enough to end Gregor; but he wasn’t going to let Arya attempt to go through Gregor to get to Cersei. He and Arya had argued about this several times, but he’d put his foot down. No matter how dangerous Arya thought she was, he would not risk Gregor killing her. 

She had yelled at him about her expert assassin skills, reminding him she had killed all the Freys and the Night King and even Meryn Trant, but he had firmly told her that there was no way he’d let her face off against his brother. She had huffed and puffed angrily, but he noticed a softness in her eyes that wasn’t normally there – something like affection. Had he not been who he was, he would have told Arya how dear she was to him, how proud he was of her, how he wished she’d turn around right now and get herself to safety; he would tell her to stop being stupid and go back to the bastard-blacksmith-lord she was so fond of; he’d tell her that he would lay down his life to protect hers and that there were only two people in this world that he loved and she was one of them.

As it was, he was the Hound. He couldn’t bring himself to say any of that, just like he couldn’t bear to look back at Sansa once the time had come for him to leave. 

When they finally made it into the Red Keep, there was no one there to fight. Everyone had left and Sandor wondered if Cersei had left too. But going by what he knew of her, she wouldn’t leave the Keep as long as most of it still stood. She wouldn’t escape the castle walls only to join the peasants in the street. Sandor knew her well enough to know that she would rather die under a collapsing castle than in the street with commoners.

Sandor went in the direction that he remembered her chambers were located. He and Arya passed into the covered walkway that opened to the map room. His eyes moved to the dragon flying overhead, but he didn’t stop until the walls shook and rock came crumbling down around them. He stared at the walls as they trembled. A few more passes from the dragon and the whole side of the keep would tumble down. If Arya followed him up those stairs, she wouldn’t come back down.

He shook his head slightly and with the realization that he couldn’t let her die, he said, “Go home, girl.”

Behind him, Arya said nothing, so he continued on. “Fire will get her. Or one of the Dothraki. Or maybe that dragon will eat her,” he added as he watched the dragon pass overhead once again. “Doesn’t matter, she’s dead,” he turned to her, speaking in earnest. “And you’ll be dead too if you don’t get out of here.”

Above him, the dragon screamed and he turned back to see the beast flapping overhead and hoped he wouldn’t become its next meal before he’d killed Gregor.

“I’m going to kill her,” Arya said resolutely as she made to pass him.

Desperate, and a bit angry, he snatched at her arm. She gave him an incredulous look as her eyes flitted from his face to the grip he had on her. 

“You think you’ve wanted revenge a long time? I’ve been after it all my life,” she bared her teeth at him and ripped her arm away. “It’s all I care about and look at me,” he said, as she turned back to the staircase. Angered, he grabbed at her again, “_Look at me!_”

How many times had he said that to her sister? He had demanded it of her when she was too frightened of the rage in his eyes, but he’d stupidly thought it was his scar that scared her. Now, he wanted Arya to see that hatred and rage that had so scared her sister; he wanted her to see what revenge had turned him into.

“You want to be like me?” He was pleading with her, whether she realized it or not. _Don’t be like me, she-wolf. Be better._

Arya’s hardened expression softened then and her grey eyes went wide. He slid his huge hand behind her head, perhaps the only time he had touched her with affection. “You come with me, you die here.”

She looked young, then. The hate cleared from her eyes and she stared up at him and he realized he’d finally broken through that hard shell of hers. _Please don’t follow me_. He walked around her, climbed the few steps back to the covered walkway, his eyes focused on the stairway he felt he needed to take to reach Gregor.

“Sandor,” he was caught a bit off guard by the sound of his given name coming from her mouth, and he turned halfway back to her, curiously.

Her eyes were wide and clearer than he’d seen them in years. She looked like she might cry and he was prepared to call her a sniffling cunt just so he wouldn’t have to see it.

“Thank you,” she said, sounding a bit breathless.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized she wouldn’t cry or beg him not to go. He gave the tiniest of nods to his little she-wolf and turned away, trying to ignore the little gasp he heard leave her mouth as he headed up the stairs. The further he climbed, the more he realized that there was no turning back. The walls behind him were crumbling. He could hear voices up higher, one was Cersei, but the other he didn’t recognize.

Sandor slowed his pace, willing to let them come to him if they were descending. He was in open air now, much of the walls and roof of this side of the keep long gone. The dragon still screeched overhead. As he waited, he tried not to think about Arya. He tried to push Sansa from his mind.

He failed miserably.

Sandor had heard that when faced with death, one’s life could flash before their eyes. He’d been close to death several times and only once did he have time to contemplate his sorry existence. When the she-wolf had left him rotting on that mountain-side, he’d had plenty of time to think. His life had been shit and he’d been ready to die. His thoughts alternated between the cold little bitch that had left him suffering, his monster of a brother, and his little bird.

It was all regret. Regret for not killing Gregor when he’d had the chance. Regret for not trying to save Arya’s mother at the Twins, as she’d wanted him to do. Mostly of his regret surrounded Sansa. With clarity, he’d realized that he loved her. He had loved her for a long time most likely, but it had taken lying against that mountain, burning up with a fever, to realize what he felt for her was more than lust and annoyance and protectiveness.

Now, as the footsteps and the voices came closer, he didn’t have time to reflect on his life. He understood now, too late, that it was no longer shit. He had left the closest thing he’d ever had to a best friend in the map room, hoping she wouldn’t follow him. If he had believed in any gods, he would have been praying fervently that Arya got out before being flattened by falling stone. He had left her sister safely in the North curled in her bed. There was a pang in his chest as he saw her in his mind’s eye. That fire-colored hair spread out against the stark-white sheets, ivory skin flushed slightly from lovemaking, lips swollen from his mouth on her. 

Never in a thousand lifetimes would he have imagined getting to touch his little bird the way he wanted, but she had let him; she had welcomed it and wanted it. Sansa had said she loved him. It had angered him and then _he_ had angered her by accusing her of lying, pretending. Even in his last moments with her, he couldn’t stop being a hateful fool. Now it was too late. Sandor knew he’d meet his death here. His only hope was that he would take Gregor with him when the Stranger finally came for him. Abruptly, he felt a pang of regret and wished he was somewhere else. He wasn’t scared of Gregor, but the thought of Sansa suffering and heartbroken because of his terrible choices sliced through him like a blade.

But then, it was too late to turn back. The walls were crumbling and figures appeared around the bend of the staircase: Cersei in a dark gown, a small man in Maester robes with a Hand’s pin attached near his breast, and Gregor. Sandor steeled himself for the fight ahead, accepting a fate that he belatedly realized he regretted.

***

-Arya-

Her mind was a blur as she rode as far away from the center of the city as the horse could take her. She was unsure if gates had been closed again after the Northern army had pushed their way inside. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t planning on leaving the city yet, only trying to get as far away as she could from the smoke and the rubble and the bodies lining the streets. She kept her eyes on the path in front of her, dodging crumbled stone and bodies. The smells assaulting her nostrils caused bile to rise in her throat. She fought it back down, desperate to get away from the sensory overload she found herself in the middle of.

The stench of smoke and the stench of dead bodies were bad enough on their own – but the stench of burnt bodies was much worse and finally her stomach could handle no more. She emptied its contents into the street as she rode on, refusing to stop. She noticed that her hands were shaking, but she didn’t know if it was from her retching or the fear that gripped her whole body. She kept seeing the tumbling stone and the people who were trying to dodge it. The image of people running about wildly, bodies aflame, haunted her as she slowed the horse at the edge of the city. 

Arya dropped off its back and collapsed on the ground, her own lungs still burning from the thick smoke in the air. She crouched in the road on her hands and knees, wheezing with every breath, sure that she was about to retch again. Her shaking hands angered her as she stared down at them.

_Get ahold of yourself, Arya Stark_. _You’re no craven._

But it didn’t take a craven to run in fear of what she had just experienced. She had left the Red Keep, determined to stay alive, only to nearly die in the streets with hundreds, or maybe thousands, of others. There was no way to know yet how many people had suffered the wrath of the Dragon Queen, but in the moment, it had seemed that everyone who lived in the city had been near death. Arya closed her eyes, but couldn’t shake the image of burning bodies.

And the burning made her think of the Hound.

_No, Sandor,_ she corrected herself. Unwanted images of what may have happened to him flooded her mind and she clenched her teeth together to prevent a strangled cry from escaping. She didn’t want to think about what had happened to him, but couldn’t help it. Had the Mountain snapped his neck like a twig? Had Sandor met the business end of a Gregor’s great sword? Had he been crushed beneath the falling stone?

Had Daenerys’s dragon breathed fire onto him?

This time, Arya couldn’t stop the pitiful moan that burst forth. Tears leaked from her closed eyes and she let herself fall all the way to the ground on her stomach, gasping for breath as sobs tore through her. _Not the dragon_, she thought. _Let it be a broken neck or a sword through the belly. Not a dragon, please._

Her dark imagination conjured up visions of what may have happened to him. Arya had seen death countless times, but for some reason, his was haunting her. Why had she not realized before now all he had done for her? She had stopped hating him long ago, it was true; but she had not really thought about all the times he had kept her safe and watched over her. As a child, she had hated him. She had wanted him dead. When her chance came to kill him, she couldn’t do it.

Arya had told herself that she didn’t kill him because he needed to suffer, and while he had suffered, she knew that deep down, she wouldn’t have been able to end his life. With sudden clarity, Arya understood that Sandor had been the best father figure to her that he knew how to be. Admittedly, he hadn’t known much about it, but he had kept her safe and fed and fought for her when maybe no one else would have. And most importantly, he had convinced her to turn back when it meant certain death.

Cersei wasn’t worth dying, Arya knew that now. She had seen what revenge had done to Sandor. _“Hate is as good as any to keep a person going, better than most”_, he’d told her. And when Arya finally opened her eyes enough to see _him_, Sandor, the man – she saw that that hatred in his eyes had lessened and left more sadness than anything else. Had Sandor gone up that tower because he believed he had nothing else to live for?

The thought would likely haunt her all of her days. She didn’t want to be like that. She _knew_ she had many things to live for. She was young still and had her whole life ahead of her. Her father, her mother, Robb, and Rickon were dead, it was true; but Jon, and Sansa, and Bran were all alive. So was Gendry.

She registered at some point that her Jon may not have survived the burning of the city. Arya knew Jon had marched in with the Northern army, so he would have been in just as much danger as she had been. Instead of taking her mind off Sandor’s death, the thought of Jon only gave her something else to worry over. She needed to find him, if he’d survived.

Arya stayed near the edge of the city for some time. She found a well that seemed clean enough and dipped water out so that she could wash the dust and blood from her skin. The horse she had found had since wandered off. She had found a hiding spot in an alley between two stable buildings to rest for a while and had seen several soldiers from the Northern army, the Dothraki, and the Unsullied drifting through the streets. Many of the soldiers were directing those who were injured to a place where they could get help. Arya finally left her hiding spot when the streets appeared mostly clear of soldiers and made her way back to the Red Keep. She heard the screeching of the dragon in that direction and knew it must have landed close.

When Arya found the armies, Daenerys was standing atop an elevated platform, speaking in what sounded like High Valyrian. Arya understood only a handful of the words, but she got the gist of it. When Daenerys was done speaking to the Unsullied, she then turned her attention to her Dothraki horde and began speaking their language. Arya could not comprehend any Dothraki, but it was just as clear as the bits and pieces of Valyrian she had picked up.

Daenerys wasn’t done. She was a conqueror, a killer, and anyone who disagreed with her would meet a fiery end.

Arya moved behind the armies stealthily. She caught sight of Jon standing to Daenerys’s right as she continued to speak. A huge sigh of relief left her body when she saw he appeared to be in one piece. Daenerys finished speaking and Tyrion Lannister was led away ahead of her. The Dragon Queen stopped in front of Jon, but they didn’t appear to be exchanging any words. On silent feet, she approached him until she stood at his side. He was watching Daenerys with unmasked horror on his face.

When he finally turned his head and saw her, his dark eyes widened in shock. He turned to her fully. “What are you doing here?”

Jon’s eyes scanned over the bumps and bruises she’d gathered earlier in the day. He reached out to her, one gloved hand cupping her face and the other landing on her shoulder. “Hey, what happened?”

“I came to kill Cersei,” she told him honestly. Her eyes flitted to Daenerys’s retreating form as she struggled to tell him without the burning rage that was suddenly lit inside her, “Your queen got there first.”

Jon’s hands left her then, and she wondered if her tone had wounded him. From the corner of her eye, she saw him to turn to watch Daenerys as well. He sighed, “She’s everyone’s queen now.”

“Try telling Sansa,” Arya responded, managing to keep her tone even. She cut her eyes back to him and that same horror she’d seen moments before returned to his face. He understood the implication of her words and suddenly seemed a bit breathless. It pained Arya to see the terror on his face when the realization hit him that Daenerys would do to the North exactly what she had done to King’s Landing.

“Wait for me outside the city gates. I’ll come find you,” he made to walk off, but Arya grabbed his arm.

“Jon. She knows who you are,” she searched his eyes, waiting for it dawn on him what she meant. “Who you _really _are.” Arya knew that Sansa had told Tyrion. It was confessed to her by a tearful Sansa who wondered if she hadn’t made the whole situation worse. “You’ll always be a threat to her,” she told him in earnest, her eyes sliding back to Daenerys, “And I know a killer when I see one.”

Jon’s eyes went back to Daenerys’s retreating form and Arya saw the anguish wash over his face. She knew he loved Daenerys, but that only made the dragon queen more dangerous to her brother. Daenerys didn’t seem the kind to sneakily manipulate anyone, but Jon could be stupid when it came to love. 

Arya took a breath and said, “Your life is in danger, Jon. I know that your life may not mean much to you in comparison with honor, but think of everyone else. Think of Sansa. Think of the whole North.”

Jon’s eyes met hers and she could see then that the message was clear to him. His anguish was replaced by a bitter resolve. “I need to speak with Tyrion,” he said. “Find somewhere you can rest,” he told her. “Get something to eat.”

Jon gave her another pat on her shoulder and stalked away in the direction Daenerys had just gone. Arya’s stomach gave a rumble and she decided to take Jon’s advice and go in search of food. With one last glance over her shoulder, she watched her brother disappear from sight.

_Please don’t get yourself killed. Please be smart._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though I use some dialogue from the show, I didn't want to just rewrite the entire scene, which is why I chose not to write Sandor's fight scene with Gregor...that and I think I suck at writing fight scenes so...anyway...I may give it a try at a later date.
> 
> And I apologize that there's some show scenes in here, but I really wanted to write what the characters were thinking during those scenes. I hope it's not too redundant!


	12. Gendry III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gendry arrives in King's Landing on the eve of Jon's trial.
> 
> He learns some startling news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long Gendry chapter...maybe the longest chapter I've written so far.

-Gendry-

_She did this. The woman we all supported._

King’s Landing looked like a wasteland. It had been weeks since Daenerys Targaryen had unleashed hellfire on the city. Most of the buildings had seen some damage, but it was Flea Bottom that had taken the worst hit. Anger twisted in Gendry’s gut as he passed the ruins of his old home. There were still people picking through rubble. Whether they were looking for lost family members or possessions, Gendry didn’t know. 

Davos rode at Gendry’s side wearing a look on his face that Gendry was sure matched his own. This was his home too. How many innocent children had perished from dragon fire? How many families would look forever for remains that may have been disintegrated when Daenerys turned Drogon onto the smallfolk of King’s Landing? 

_And Arya is here somewhere_.

Gendry knew that King’s Landing was her destination. She had disappeared one day without telling anyone her plans, but Gendry knew where she was going. Cersei Lannister was dead, along with the Kingslayer, but their bodies had been found beneath rocks. Apparently, Arya hadn’t gotten the revenge she so craved. 

Gendry had worried about Arya when he’d heard what had happened. Arya had immediately sent a raven to Lady Sansa letting her know that she was alive and Sansa had passed on the information to him. He had been relieved, but not really shocked. If anyone could survive dragon fire, a couple of mad queens, and the Mountain, it was Arya. He wrestled with whether or not he wanted to see her. Knowing she was alive could be enough, but he wasn’t sure how he’d react once they were in closer proximity. 

Gendry also found himself pondering if Arya had been the one to end the Gregor Clegane. Gendry’s time at Harrenhal still haunted him at times. The Mountain and his men had caused him to live in a constant state of fear during his time as a prisoner. He feared for himself, but he also feared for Arya. If he’d been forced to watch her die, he may have lay down and died himself. He remembered Gregor Clegane as a monster and he wasn’t sure how Arya could have taken him down.

Someone had, obviously. They’d found his body, or what remained of it. He had clearly fallen from a great height as every bone in his body was reportedly broken. On top of that, he’d fallen into fire. There wasn’t much left of him due to the fire, but the maesters had been able to identify him by his size and bits of armor that had survived. It was told that he had leaked black blood onto the ground around him before he burned to death. 

Perhaps Clegane had ended his brother. It was likely no one would ever know for sure. There had been no mention of the Hound in Arya’s brief missive to her sister. No one else had spoken of him either and Gendry formed the conclusion that he must have died. He felt something a little like sadness at the thought. Clegane had never been nice to Gendry, but then, he wasn’t really nice to anyone. But Gendry had come to respect him and it was clear that Arya had some kind of connection with him. 

His party rode through the gates of the Red Keep and after their horses were stabled, some of the Unsullied escorted them to their rooms. The room assigned to Gendry was much larger than any he’d ever slept in. At Winterfell, he’d usually found a place to sleep in the forge, which was always warmer than one of the thousands of tents he was expected to sleep in. The room even had its own solar, which utterly baffled him. 

As he stood in the doorway between his bed chambers and the solar, looking between the two of them and wondering if he’d been placed in the wrong room, he was startled by a voice saying, “It’s because you’re a lord.”

He jumped a little and turned to scowl at Arya, who had crept up on him like a ghost. A small smile played at her lips. Her hands were clasped behind her back and she was giving him that curious look, as though trying to figure out why he was such an idiot.

“What are you doing here?” He asked her, breaking contact with those grey eyes.

She snorted softly. “I’ve been here for weeks. What a stupid question.”

“I meant,” he said through gritted teeth, “why are you in _my room_?”

Something flashed in her eyes that might have been hurt, had it not been Arya, but she recovered quickly. “I wanted to see that you were comfortable.”

“Such a gracious hostess,” he said flatly.

She looked around for a moment. “You certainly have better accommodations than Jon.”

Gendry had heard that Jon had confessed to killing Daenerys soon after it happened. There was no body, so Gendry wondered what had possessed the King in the North to confess to something that couldn’t be proven. _Honor_, he thought, unsure if he should be impressed with Jon’s honesty or angered at his stupidity.

Even though Queen Daenerys had been the one to give Gendry his new title, it was Jon that Gendry felt the most loyal to. Jon had believed in him and allowed him to go beyond the Wall with him. Jon had shown him respect when everyone else ignored his existence. Gendry could be stupid sometimes, but he wasn’t so stupid that he hadn’t realized Daenerys Targaryen’s motivations for legitimizing him. It had been a scheme and Gendry had seen it as such, but had felt the need to take advantage of it if it got him closer to being worthy of Arya. It hadn’t worked in the end anyway, and Gendry’s true allegiance to Jon had never really changed.

“Have you been able to visit him?” Gendry asked, thinking that if he kept the topic on Jon he could tolerate her presence with more ease.

Arya shook her head. “He isn’t allowed visitors. He visited Tyrion before Daenerys was killed and some people think Tyrion talked him into it, so the safer solution is to keep everyone away from the prisoners.” Arya’s mouth twitched slightly. “They don’t want Jon talking someone into killing Grey Worm, I guess.”

Gendry watched her face for a moment and somehow he _knew _just from the murderous glint in her eyes that she had considered it. He was ready to tell her to leave his room so he could rest, but curiosity got the better of him. “So Queen Cersei…”

Arya’s jaw tightened at Cersei’s name and her eyes flickered to the floor. “Dead,” she told him. “Not by my hand, but dead all the same.”

He couldn’t tell if she was angry about losing the chance to take down Cersei, so he said, “Sorry you didn’t get your revenge.”

Her brows furrowed as she stared hard at a spot on the floor. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone and I’ve made my peace with it.” Her eyes shifted to his. “Should’ve realized a long time ago that revenge doesn’t take away the hurt of the offense. When Joffrey died, I felt hollow. I thought I felt that way because I hadn’t been the one to do it. Then when I _did_ get revenge on some of those who had wronged my family…” Arya lifted one shoulder in a small shrug. “I felt the same as I had when Joffrey died. Killing those who caused me pain doesn’t make the pain any better.”

She seemed sad and Gendry had the overwhelming urge to go to her and comfort her. But Arya wouldn’t appreciate his offer of comfort and the thought of touching her made his guts clench in such a way that he wasn’t sure he could handle the pain of letting her go again. He was ecstatic to see her alive, but then he hadn’t truly expected her to die. Now, as she stood in front of him, the silence between them turning awkward, he almost wished she hadn’t come near him.

“Arya,” he said, sounding a little desperate to his own ears. “It’s been a long journey. I need some rest before I have to be around all those noble lords again at dinner,” he looked around at the large bed and was assailed by thoughts of what could be done in that bed other than sleeping. “If you don’t mind…” His eyes shifted to the door.

She stared at him blankly for a moment, then it dawned on her that he meant for her to leave. “Oh, I was going to…stay in your room…”

That old temper of his that had gotten him into so much trouble as a child reared its head at that moment. “And why would you do that, _my lady_?” He asked it through gritted teeth, his eyes narrowed at her.

She didn’t even flinch at his temper, which just made him angrier. In fact, his anger seemed to fuel her anger, and those dark grey eyes sparked with a fire he hadn’t seen in a while. “Why would I not, _my lord_? Now that you have a title, are you opposed to sharing your bed outside marriage? How quickly you began turning up your nose at carnal desires.” Her voice was steady and she hadn’t even raised it, but she was baring her teeth at him and looked about ready to tackle him to the ground.

Gendry forced a caustic laugh and looked down at her, putting his face close to hers. “Have you already forgotten, my lady? You rejected me. Did you sustain some hit to your head in these last few weeks that made you forget?”

She shoved him, and though she was quite strong for such a small person, it barely moved him. Growling in anger, she shoved at him again.

“I only rejected your marriage proposal! How was I to know that my refusal to marry you would make you not want me? How was I supposed to know that you becoming a lord would change how you felt?” She spun around and was already through the threshold before he’d snagged her hand and spun her back around.

Arya tried to jerk her hand away, but Gendry’s hands were strong and his grip was like iron. He pointed a finger in her face. “I never stopped wanting you. But tell me how you expect me to act when I spill my guts and you more or less tell me to marry someone else?”

Arya’s expression was one of outrage. “I _never_ told you to marry someone else, you idiot!”

“Did you not?” Gendry said sarcastically, finally releasing her hand. “Because that’s what I heard…”

“Aye, you heard that because you’re a thick-skulled, stubborn _arse_ who hears what you want. I never told you to marry anyone, nor would I. The thought of you marrying some pretty little lady makes me want to stab something! All I said was that any lady would be lucky to be your wife!” Arya stopped to breathe, glaring at him angrily. After a couple of seconds, she calmed a bit, and said, “And I was telling the truth. Any lady _would_ be lucky to be your wife, but that doesn’t mean that I _suggested_ it or that I want it. You’re so stupid!”

Gendry stilled as he thought back to that conversation. He had been quite drunk at the time, so his memories weren’t the clearest. On top of that, he’d done his damnedest to not think about it. The rejection, the hurt – those things he remembered well enough, but the words they had exchanged were more elusive. 

“If the only way you want me is as a wife, do you really want _me_ at all?” Her eyes were searching his face and he could plainly see the hurt in them, on display for the first time since he had rejected her offer to be her family.

“Arya,” he breathed and tentatively reached for her.

For a moment, she watched him, clearly reluctant to get any closer to him. Discouraged, Gendry began to drop his hand, but she caught it in her own, interlacing their fingers. Her hand was so unbelievably small and so soft considering they were the hands of a killer. He wanted to bring the back of her hand to his mouth and press a kiss to it, but he resisted the urge.

“I’ve wanted you for a long time,” he told her quietly. “When you were a skinny thirteen year old girl with dirt all over your face and carrying a stench because you’d had no bath for weeks…I wanted you then. It wasn’t that I wanted to bed you then,” he added quickly when she gave him a curious look. “It’s only that I knew I didn’t want to be away from you – ever. It had nothing to do with your eight-thousand-year lineage, I can assure you that. Many times I found that I wanted you to be a commoner. I knew I’d never deserve you, but if you were a commoner, I could have got myself a smithy, provided for you…” He squeezed her hand and took a shaky breath. “I never deserved you, Arya. And when I finally got what I needed – a lordship – so that I could be with you, you rejected me.”

“A lordship doesn’t make you deserve me,” she told him, arching her brow.

He rolled his eyes, “Aye, I know, Lady Stark. No one could deserve you…” He was joking, but he stopped talking at the look on her face.

“I meant that you were always worthy, you fool,” she said seriously. “A lordship changed nothing between us except what you expected of me.” Though her voice was cold, there was something, _something _in her face that he couldn’t quite identify. As he tried to puzzle it out, Arya must have gotten impatient because she yanked her hand away.

“Arya,” he called as she stepped out of his room. He wasn’t sure what to say to her, he only knew that he wanted her to come back.

She didn’t turn around, but called to him, “I’ll see you at the evening meal.”

****

Evening meal, as it turned out, was held in Gendry’s solar. Apparently, so much of the Keep had been damaged that it was unsafe to eat in any of the meal halls. Furthermore, most of the lords and ladies pouring into King’s Landing wanted to keep to themselves as they were now all suspicious of one another. Gendry had been able to nap perhaps a couple of hours before servants arrived, banging at his door and waking him from a nap that hadn’t last nearly long enough.

Davos had evidently arranged this dinner party, thinking that it would look good if Gendry became familiar with some of the other nobles. Arya attended, and brought with her Sansa and Brienne. He recalled that Brienne was from the Stormlands, so he figured he might as well get to know her a little better.

Among other attendees were Edmure Tully, Robin Arryn, Yara Greyjoy, and Howland Reed. Gendry had never heard of Reed until that night, and had only heard of Edmure and Robin in passing. He knew Yara though, as he had spent some nights on Dragonstone drinking with her. She could hold her ale better than he could. 

“What is it like?” Yara asked him around a mouthful of food. “Spending your entire life a peasant and suddenly being elevated to Lord of Storm’s End?”

“Umm,” Gendry said stupidly, unsure of how to answer. The polite response would be to tell her that he had been honored by the elevation and that it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. “It’s…overwhelming, though I haven’t missed a meal yet and I’m told I’ll be taught my letters.” He tried to end it on a positive note, but he didn’t sound convincing to his own ears. His face grew hot as he looked around the table. They were all staring at him. 

Arya appeared as though she were trying to fight a smirk. Sansa smiled at him kindly, as though she was at least trying to understand his predicament. Davos gave him a stern look as if to let him know that his response was not a noble one. Lord Reed was listening politely, but hadn’t said a word the whole meal and likely had nothing to say about Gendry’s sudden fortune. Both Edmure and Robin Arryn were looking at him as if they thought he’d lost his mind. After all, who wouldn’t be grateful to be plucked out of their laborious existence as an armorer and made into a lord?

In Gendry’s experience though, it seemed as though more people had personal vendettas against lords than they did blacksmiths.

“Did Jon…King Jon legitimize you?” Edmure stumbled over the question. He didn’t seem clear on whether or not Jon was still to be addressed as king, given his prisoner status.

Gendry shook his head and stared down at the food on his plate. “No, my lord. The Dra..Her Grace, Daenerys Targaryen…”

“Daenerys legitimized you,” Yara said, “and yet you’re sitting here with the family of the man who killed her.”

“So are you,” Arya said coldly, “though I can solve that problem for you rather quickly if you’re opposed to it.”

Yara smirked at the younger Stark girl. “Not at all, my lady. Admittedly, I consider myself to be loyal to Daenerys, but I have no ill feelings toward any of you and I understand the need to have a trial,” her eyes met Gendry’s, “But he gained more from the Dragon Queen’s generosity than any of us, so I was only curious.”

Gendry desperately wanted to point out that the Dragon Queen had destroyed most of his old home, and even opened his mouth to say something to her, but Davos gave him a sharp look and he snapped his mouth shut. He really wished this was not happening in his room. 

“Perhaps Her Grace only awarded Lord Baratheon Storm’s End to insure his loyalty,” Sansa said, her ice blue eyes flashing toward Yara. “Jon wanted to do it as soon as he learned of Gendry’s heritage, but he was encouraged to hold off on the honor until the wars had been won.”

Davos cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter who legitimized him; Lord Gendry is grateful for the honor.”

Gendry nodded in agreement, hoping this acknowledgment would turn the topic of conversation to something else.

“Didn’t Robert have other bastards?” Edmure asked, his eyes flicking to Gendry. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but I just wonder if you’re going to have any..errr…competition or opposition once you reach your seat?”

“Umm,” Gendry said again, eyes shifting from Davos to Arya, which was ridiculous because _she_ wasn’t going to help him. She looked far too amused for his liking.

“I believe Gendry is the oldest living child of King Robert,” Davos said.

“Forgive me, Ser Davos,” Robin Arryn cut in. “But I think you may be mistaken. There is a bastard girl in the Vale…”

“Mya Stone,” Sansa mused quietly, meeting Robin’s eyes.

The young lord nodded. “Yes, Mya Stone is older than you, my lord. Though I doubt you have cause to worry. Mya would not be interested in Storm’s End.”

“Perhaps not,” Edmure said, giving Gendry an uneasy look, “But what if there are others who are older?”

_Then they can have it_, Gendry wanted to say. He dropped his head in his hands and stared down at his plate. _Seven hells, even evening meal is a hassle now._

“Are you going to withdraw your support for Lord Baratheon, uncle?” Sansa asked as one auburn eyebrow rose in question.

“Wha-what? No, of course not, Sansa!” He seemed flustered and Gendry peeked up to see color flooding the lord’s face.

“It’s _Lady_ Sansa, my lord,” Arya reminded him, though she hadn’t said a word when Sansa had called him “uncle” instead of “my lord”.

Lord Edmure’s lips thinned out and he huffed in irritation. “Forgive me, my lady. I was only raising legitimate concerns.”

“It’s no concern of ours,” Sansa said. “Gendry has been legitimized and awarded Storm’s End. Anyone who wishes to contest it will have to address their issue with the new king or queen.”

_Whoever that is_, Gendry thought, staring miserably into his wine glass. It seemed doubtful that Jon would be crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms since he was currently imprisoned. Gendry wasn’t even sure if he would live through the trial, much less come out on top. Since a couple hours after Gendry had been made a lord, he’d been wishing to go back to his old life. The only reason he’d been excited about his lordship had fallen through immediately. 

Gendry lifted his eyes to take a quick glimpse of Arya, and found that she was watching him. With a jerk of her head, she indicated that she wanted him to follow her. Without excusing herself, she pushed back from the table and sauntered out of the room. Gendry cleared his throat and mumbled an “excuse me, please” before following her into the hallway.

Arya didn’t slow down or say anything else to him until they came to an empty room whose door stood open. Clearly the room had been left empty purposely as there was noticeable damage in the form of a partially missing wall. This didn’t deter Arya though, and she stepped beyond the damage onto the balcony. Gendry’s heart leapt in fear. “That’s not safe!”

“It’s fine,” she snapped at him. “The balcony is stable. I’ve already been out here a dozen times.”

Gendry followed her, stepping cautiously out onto the stones. It did appear, somehow, that the stones beneath the balcony were undisturbed. The sun was setting over Blackwater Bay and Gendry found it calmed his frayed nerves.

“I should warn you,” Arya started, cutting her eyes at him, “that if worse comes to worse, your name may be offered up as an option for king.”

Breath left his body and his mouth went dry. He shook his head as he stared at her in shock. “You’re japing.”

“I’m not, unfortunately,” she said, turning to him fully. Her hard, grey eyes softened slightly. “Everyone is fine with you being pushed into this position, yet they refuse to tell you the consequences of being a lord. So let’s have a bit of a history lesson, shall we?”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

Arya turned away, her gaze settling back on the sunlit bay. “Now that Daenerys is dead and Jon will likely be unable to take the throne, it would fall to Daenerys’s closest living relative. As it happens, your great-grandmother was a Targaryen.”

Gendry felt like he needed to sit. He made to take a seat on the balcony rail, then thought better of it, still not completely trusting that the structure hadn’t been damaged. “I was right. I don’t like it.” He felt sick suddenly. Surely no one in their right mind would try to put him on the throne.

“I don’t like it either,” Arya said quietly. “Uncle Edmure clearly hasn’t put much thought into it, but Sansa and I talked about as soon as she arrived. She, of course, believes that Jon should be allowed to take the throne, figuratively speaking since it no longer exists…but we both know the chances of that are slim. Right now, the best we can hope to do is save his life.”

“Arya, I’m not qualified to be king. I’m not qualified to be a _lord_. I don’t know how to read, much less rule a kingdom…”

“Seven,” she corrected.

Gendry dropped into a crouch, his chest feeling suddenly tight with anxiety. Surely no one would believe it a wise decision to declare him king. “It won’t happen, will it? The odds of it happening…”

“I don’t know,” Arya said. “It seems unlikely, but…there’s no one else. And it doesn’t matter whether you want it or not. It will be your duty.” She sounded sad.

Gendry felt the pressure weighing him down and he wished he’d stayed in the North. Staying in the North likely would only have prolonged the potential trouble he could get into, but at least he felt safer there. King’s Landing had been his home for most of his life, but the scenery was no longer familiar. He was on the wrong side of the Keep’s walls, wearing clothes finer than he’d ever worn, and discussing a future he could never have imagined.

“Gendry,” Arya said softly, and still crouched, he looked up at her to find that she looked worried too. “We need to get back. The trial is tomorrow and something will likely be discussed…just…be careful.”

Gendry blew out a breath and stood back up. His hands were shaking. Arya had already left the balcony and was heading back to the dinner party. He wished that she’d stayed because he desperately needed someone to talk to. He didn’t know if he should say anything to Davos because he didn’t want to put the man in any danger.

_Wished I was still a bastard blacksmith_, he thought grimly as he made to follow Arya back to dinner. He knew he would be unable to finish his meal. He’d lost his appetite.


	13. Sansa IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Umm.
> 
> So. Much. Angst. And a little bit of politics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't really supposed to have a plot since it started out as "deleted scenes", but...now it kind of has one? And has kind of shifted into AU...?
> 
> Oh, well. Enjoy!

-Sansa-

As soon as she had received the news of Jon’s arrest, Sansa had made for White Harbor and took the first ship down to King’s Landing. She was sick the whole trip, vomiting into a metal bucket as the ship rocked with the waves. Thankfully, seasickness was as good an excuse as any for her upset tummy. Truthfully, Sansa couldn’t say whether it was seasickness or her pregnancy, but no one seemed to suspect the latter. But when the vessel finally dropped anchor in Blackwater Bay, Sansa didn’t feel any less nauseous. The thought of returning to King’s Landing was almost as bad as a couple of weeks on choppy waters. 

Arya awaited her at the docks, dressed in a fine leather jerkin and clean breeches. Arya’s expression gave nothing away and it irritated Sansa to know that Arya could likely read every emotion that crossed her face, even as good as she was at wearing her Lady of Winterfell mask, but she could hardly tell if Arya was even bothered. 

With a large escort of armed guards, the sisters rode through the ruined city on horseback, Sansa wincing in discomfort every so often. Arya, of course, picked up on this immediately and watched her with suspicion. Hoping to change the subject, Sansa inquired after their brother.

“Will I be able to see Jon?” Sansa asked.

“Unlikely,” Arya said. “He and Tyrion are being held prisoner, as you know. I’ll admit I’m surprised Daenerys didn’t feed Tyrion to her dragon as soon as he betrayed her.”

As they rode through the streets and the ruin seemed to go on and on, Sansa felt her heart sink as she took in the destruction. There was hardly anything left. Flea Bottom had been completely leveled. There were people on the streets outside of the buildings, milling about, going about their day to day activities. They were likely all homeless now. 

There were crews in the streets working on clean up, but it was clearly a project that would take months. Sansa slowed several times as she caught sight of a skinny, near naked child or an old person picking through the destruction of their home, just trying to go on with their lives. Arya said nothing, but her guards gently urged her onward.

The Red Keep was half-collapsed and Sansa felt a moment of victory at that before the feeling was quickly doused, knowing that far more innocent people had suffered than guilty who had seen justice. Cersei was dead, she had heard, and though she was happy to be rid of her, it didn’t change the fact that the woman who had ended her had taken thousands of innocent lives in the process.

“Is it true?” Sansa asked, looking to her sister. “Did Jon…?”

Arya nodded. “Yes. Idiot admitted to it. There would have been little evidence against him since her dragon flew away with her body, but…you know Jon.”

“He did it…because she did this?”

Arya nodded again. “She didn’t care who was in her path. _I_ was in her path.”

Sansa was quiet for several moments before she finally gained the courage to ask, “And Sandor?”

Arya didn’t turn to face her, but peeked at her from the corner of her eye. “The Dragon Queen didn’t get him, if that’s what you want to know.”

Sansa swallowed with some difficulty. “So, he’s alive then?”

“No,” Arya answered, her voice sounding strained.

Sansa’s breath left her body in a whoosh and black dots appeared before her vision. She tried to draw in a deep breath, but found that she could only breathe shallowly before raggedly releasing it. Her struggle drew Arya’s attention.

“Sansa!” Her voice, full of alarm, seemed far away, though Arya rode mere feet from her.

Sansa gripped the reins of her horse with one hand as her other came to lie against her heart. It beat strongly and rapidly in her chest. Odd that her heart should keep on beating when she was certain it had just been ripped out. 

Arya’s hand was suddenly gripping the crook of her elbow. “Do _not _faint, Sansa! Not here.”

Sansa nodded weakly, still trying to regulate her breathing. She should have known, perhaps, what the outcome would be. He had told her numerous times how he expected it to end. But Sansa had thought, or hoped rather, that the gods would realize that they owed her one for all of the shit she’d been through in her young life. She had thought perhaps that they would give her this one gift. 

But there were no gods, isn’t that what Sandor told her? There was no higher being that could help her, no entity to which she could lay the blame.

She was hurt and she was angry. She had determinedly not thought about Sandor’s fate since she had received the news of what Jon had done. As long as she didn’t know what had happened to Sandor, she could still hold out for hope that he was alive. Jon’s fate seemed much more certain and she had come here determined to save her brother from certain death.

They rode in silence all the way to the courtyard of the Red Keep. Their horses were stabled and Arya led Sansa to her room, a hand clasped to Sansa’s forearm as though to steady her. Once inside, Arya slammed the door shut and Sansa collapsed in a chair, one hand clutching at her heart, the other flattened against her stomach. She looked up at her sister, who showed no signs of distress on her cold face other than a small flicker of worry in her dark eyes. 

“Do you need to lie down?” Arya asked calmly. “Do you need a chamber pot?”

Sansa’s hands trembled as she nodded, not specifically telling Arya what she needed. This didn’t bother her sister, however, as she gently urged Sansa to rise from the chair and led her to the bed. She then retrieved the chamber pot and placed it on the floor just under where Sansa’s head would be if she needed to roll over and empty the contents of her stomach. Sansa lay on her side, knees tucked near her stomach, and waited for the tears to come. Her body convulsed every few seconds with the promise of a sob, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Arya stood at her side, hands clasped behind her back, just watching her.

_I must be in shock_, Sansa thought wearily when the tears still hadn’t made an appearance after lying there for what may have been minutes or an hour. She forced herself to focus on Arya, who was calm and patient, waiting for Sansa to be able to speak. Oddly, it struck her that this was one of the many things about Arya that had changed. As a child, Arya would have been bouncing around impatiently, telling Sansa to pull herself together because there were bigger concerns. 

Sansa finally found the strength to sit up again. Her hair was sure to be a mess and her dress was wrinkled. She met Arya’s eyes. “Do you know what happened to him?”

The mask slipped some, Sansa noticed. A line appeared between Arya’s brows and her mouth turned down slightly. Her shoulders slumped minutely and her eyes lost that hard look, softening into sadness.

“He went after his brother,” she said simply. “I don’t know how it ended.” Arya paused, watching Sansa’s face, likely wondering how to tell her delicately what had likely happened. “We were together. I was going to kill Cersei, he was going to kill Gregor. We made it into Maegor’s Holdfast without issue, though half of it was already in danger of collapsing. There was map room we passed through – the walls were crumbling and some of the roof was gone. We could see the dragon flying overhead.” Arya unclasped her hands and walked slowly to the bed, taking a seat next to her sister. “Once he saw the state of the castle, he didn’t want me to go with him. We argued a bit, but I ended up leaving. He didn’t want me to die.” Arya’s hand crept over to Sansa’s. Her small, rough hand clasped around Sansa’s long elegant fingers. “He saved me, Sansa.”

Sansa squeezed her sister’s fingers and met her eyes, finally feeling the prickle of tears. “He sent you back, but…”

Arya dropped her eyes. “I didn’t even try to stop him, Sansa. I’m sorry. Only – I knew it wouldn’t do any good and I _knew_ that he wanted me to get out. If I had stood there arguing with him any longer…”

“You might have died with him,” Sansa said. It was the first time she had verbally mentioned his death and it did something to her. Sansa had suffered through horrific physical abuse. Ramsay had done unspeakable things to her. He had defiled her in ways she hadn’t known possible. He had flayed parts of her body that had caused so much pain that she was certain she would never feel worse. But this…throughout all the physical abuse, she’d never been stabbed, but Sansa guessed that what she felt now must be what it was like to have a knife thrust in your gut and twisted. Her hand landed on her stomach again, absently, but Arya didn’t miss it.

“Sansa,” she said abruptly, louder than she had previously been speaking. Hands still clasped, Arya reached over with her other hand, laying it atop Sansa’s. “_Sansa_.”

“I’m carrying his child,” Sansa told her, her voice surprisingly flat despite everything she was feeling.

The hand gripping Sansa’s fingers tightened. Arya’s eyes went even wider, but she didn’t say a word. Sansa had worked to keep everything separate in her mind, not to stress about everything at once, but now it was suddenly catching up with her. Her brother was being held prisoner for the murder of the queen, however short her reign may have been. The realm was without a ruler and Sansa wanted to speak with her sister about the very real possibility that the newly-made Gendry Baratheon would be offered up as the next ruler. Her secret marriage had resulted in a pregnancy which she would have to bear on her own because her husband had died trying to kill his brother. 

“The Mountain is dead?” Sansa asked Arya. There had been some talk of finding his body, but she wanted to make sure it wasn’t idle gossip.

“He is,” Arya confirmed.

Sansa tried to tell herself that Sandor hadn’t died in vain, that at least he had been able to take down his wicked brother, but it felt like a lie to even think it. He did not have to die, he’d _chosen_ to, and it made Sansa as angry as she was heartbroken. The tears came then; hot and blinding, they trailed down her cheeks in streams, rolling over her lips and down her chin as she stared ahead at nothing. She sat like that for several minutes, crying silently. Then the grief welled up in her, took ahold of her soul, and nearly strangled her.

Her body began shaking with the force of her sobs and she cried out, collapsing in on herself, pulling her knees onto the bed against her chest and burying her face against them. Her hands bunched in the wool of her dress, tugging at the material just to have something to hold onto. She could scarcely pull a breath into her lungs before it shuddered back out of her. There was a touch on her shoulder, feather-light, and she knew Arya was trying to comfort her.

She wanted to tell her sister not to bother because she knew that physical contact often made Arya uncomfortable, and of course, there was nothing in the world that could comfort her right now. But her cries had overtaken her to the point that she couldn’t manage speech. She didn’t know how long she sat curled on her bed, emptying her soul through her tears, but when she finally looked up again, the sun was beginning to set.

Arya had moved at some point and had found someone to bring them food, and so they sat down to eat. Sansa tasted none of it. She had no appetite. She might have skipped the meal altogether if not for the little one she was growing in her tummy. Sansa had a mind to water down the wine, but Arya quietly insisted that she needed it to calm her nerves and that one glass was unlikely to hurt the baby.

After they had eaten, Sansa turned her mind to other matters to distract herself from the tragedy of her life.

“Lord Baratheon will not be arriving from Storm’s End,” Sansa commented, knowing that Daenerys had ordered him there. “He was at Winterfell when we received the news. He can’t be far behind me.”

Arya nodded, seemingly unbothered that Gendry Baratheon had failed to follow his Queen’s first order. Sansa had gathered quickly that Gendry had no more allegiance to Daenerys Targaryen than he had to Sansa. It was clear enough to her that Jon was who held Gendry’s loyalty.

“I know that he asked you to marry him,” Sansa continued, then gave her sister a sheepish look when Arya’s features turned indignant. “Ser Davos let it slip.”

“Are you going to ask why I turned him down?” Arya said, giving her a glare.

“No, of course not. I _know_ why you rejected him. I only wondered how you felt about it.”

Arya sat back in her chair, clearly trying to give the impression that she was at ease with the conversation, but the tension in her shoulders told Sansa otherwise. “He should have known I would never agree to marry him.”

Sansa smiled slightly, “He was a bit drunk.”

“He’s known me long enough to not make that mistake, even drunk.”

Sansa was quiet for a moment as she gathered the courage to say why Gendry was really on her mind. Breathing deep, she said, “You know that he’s Daenerys’s heir, don’t you?”

Sansa could tell by the way that Arya didn’t even blink that the notion had already crossed her mind. “Not exactly her heir. She hadn’t named an heir, but…it seems clear cut.”

“There’s no one else with a better claim,” Sansa agreed. “He’s the only living legitimate child of Robert Baratheon. Robert, of course, justified taking the throne due to his own Targaryen heritage. There’s no one else.”

“I _know_,” Arya said in exasperation. “I am aware of the line of succession.”

“Is he?”

Arya snorted and rolled her eyes, looking so much like the old Arya that Sansa had to fight down a smile. “Of course not! Gendry can’t read. Gendry told me himself that he barely knows how to use a fork. He has no idea of his lineage. And as efficient as Ser Davos can be, I’m willing to bet that it hasn’t occurred to him.”

“When he arrives, if Davos hasn’t told him…”

“I’ll tell him,” Arya agreed before Sansa could ask. “I don’t know what’s to come after Jon’s trial, but I want to make sure Gendry is ready.”

*~*~*

Sansa was notified the next day that Gendry had arrived. When Arya had disappeared mid-morning to ride down to the docks, Sansa figured that Gendry had arrived. When Arya returned later in the afternoon, she had grumbled about missing his arrival at the docks and had turned around and followed them back to the Keep. Dinner had been discussed and Davos, who had stopped by to check on Sansa, had suggested taking their meal in Gendry’s solar.

Sansa agreed and had gone on to invite several other lords and ladies. Most of the nobles had declined, giving the excuse that they were too weary from travel to provide good company and that they were too unsettled about the state of things in King’s Landing to try to make alliances just yet. Sansa was suspicious that the true reason had a lot to do with Gendry being a bastard. No matter that he’d been legitimized, the nobility of Westeros would likely always look on Gendry with a touch of distaste. Sansa had no doubt that he could rise above it, but no matter how likeable Gendry was, no matter how resilient, there would always be those who would reject him.

In addition to Sansa, Arya, Gendry and Davos, Sansa was able to convince her Uncle Edmure and her cousin, Robin, to attend as well. It certainly helped that she had family in high places other than the North. Gendry would need all the friends he could manage. Brienne went along to the meal as well, though Sansa noted that her sworn shield was visibly out of sorts after having learned of Jaime Lannister’s fate. Sansa also invited Lord Howland Reed, if for nothing else than to have a friendly face present. Sansa had only recently become acquainted with Lord Reed, as he’d arrived to Winterfell shortly before she left for King’s Landing. He was pleasant, but also quietly intelligent, observing people from behind those dark green eyes as though he could look right through their skulls and see all of their thoughts.

Sansa was surprised when Yara Greyjoy met her outside of Gendry’s chambers. She had not known that the Queen of the Iron Islands had arrived. Outside the door, Sansa laid a gentle hand on Yara’s arm. The other woman looked down in some confusion, then met Sansa’s eyes.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am…about Theon. He was like a brother to me,” Sansa said.

“He _was_ a brother to me,” Yara said, glaring coldly at Sansa. “And if he hadn’t ran back to you only to die, he’d be my advisor right now.”

Sansa pulled her hand away, stung at the cold reception. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t _ask_ him to come back, Your Grace. But you must know that he was very loyal.”

“Yes,” Yara said, still cold but with less bite. “Loyal to the wrong house. He died defending Winterfell, a place where he grew up as a prisoner; a place where he was tortured and mutilated. He died protecting a family whose King killed my Queen.”

“She wasn’t _your_ queen if you rule the Iron Islands,” Sansa countered.

“She allowed me to take my rightful title without any opposition from her and she destroyed Euron’s fleet,” Yara’s eyes trailed from the top of Sansa’s head down to the hem of her skirt. She shook her head. “Tell me, Lady Sansa – would Daenerys have done the same for you? I doubt it. She rewards loyalty. And your brother killed her.”

With that, Yara pulled open the door and entered. Sansa took a few deep breaths and shared a wary look with Brienne, whose hand gripped the pommel of her sword. She knew that Brienne was probably ready to take Yara’s head from her body at Sansa’s word, but Sansa calmed herself and shook her head at Brienne.

The meal was tense, to say the least. Arya and Yara had a similarly heated discussion regarding Daenerys’s fate and Uncle Edmure tested Sansa’s patience. When Arya and Gendry disappeared from the room, the table was quiet for several seconds.

Then, Edmure, deciding once again to be annoying, said, “Is it not improper for Arya to be alone in the company of a bastard?”

“He’s not a bastard any longer,” Davos spoke up, his normally cheerful voice taking on an icy tone.

Edmure had the audacity to roll his eyes. “He may be legitimized, but he’s still a bastard. Changing his name from Waters to Baratheon doesn’t erase the fact that he was born on the wrong side of the sheet.” He said it matter-of-factly, as though he was making perfect sense.

“Joffrey was a bastard as well,” Sansa said as she fought to control her rising anger. “Yet he was king. Tommen was a bastard and he was king too.” She cocked her head to the side as she studied her uncle, wondering whether or not she should be the one to rock the foundations on which he sat. It would all come out anyway. “Truthfully, Gendry may be your next king. So perhaps you should lose your distaste for bastards.”

Yara Greyjoy’s head snapped around so fast that Sansa thought it might fly off. Beside her, Brienne stilled completely, frozen with her wine glass halfway to her mouth. Her little cousin, Robin, looked mildly confused, whereas Edmure looked _very_ confused. Howland Reed didn’t look surprised at all, and neither did Davos, though his frown deepened and he stared at his plate. So Davos _was_ aware, it seemed, but for whatever reason had withheld the information from Gendry. 

The table sat in silence for several seconds as everyone processed the information Sansa had given them. She knew that her dinner companions were connecting the dots in their heads and finally arriving at the same conclusion she had much earlier. Edmure put his head in his hands. Robin watched his uncle with a touch of annoyance at his dramatics. Yara took a long drink from her glass then looked at Sansa.

“Is he loyal to you as well?” Yara’s tone had a bite to it and Sansa knew she was subtly bringing up Theon’s loyalty too.

“No, Your Grace. Lord Gendry and I are not very familiar. He is, however, loyal to Jon.”

Yara frowned deeply and Sansa watched as her hand curled into a fist. Fighting a smile, Sansa added, “And as I’m sure you’ve seen, Gendry is also quite close to my sister.”

“He can’t know the first thing about ruling,” Edmure complained.

“No, it isn’t likely that he does,” Sansa said.

“And he’s loyal to the man who murdered the Queen,” Yara spat.

“He is,” Sansa said pleasantly.

Howland Reed, who had henceforth not said much, spoke up then. “If it is decided that Lord Baratheon is to be king, it stands to reason that he will pardon Jon Snow. And why should he not be pardoned?” The lord of Greywater Watch smiled, “Jon has always done what he believed to be the right thing.”

Sansa was thrown off a bit by Lord Reed’s statement, however true it might be, because she hadn’t been aware that they were familiar. Lord Reed, while pleasant, seemed to have some uncanny ability to know things that he shouldn’t, much like Bran. Sansa suppressed a shiver and reminded herself that Lord Reed was among the most loyal of the Stark bannermen.

Yara let out a low growl at Lord Reed’s statement. “Jon Snow will not be punished for his crime? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I am merely speculating, my lady,” Lord Reed said calmly, and Sansa noted that Yara’s eye twitched just a bit when Reed referred to her as ‘my lady’ rather than ‘Your Grace’.

The rest of the meal was tense. After Arya and Gendry returned, Sansa noticed that Gendry looked as queasy as Sansa felt. She knew Arya had told him, but it was hard to muster up any sympathy for him when Sansa couldn’t shake her own misery. After the meal, Sansa went for a walk in what was left of the Godswood. Many of the trees had been burned. Brienne and Arya followed her, not listening when she protested about needing time to herself.

“I’ll not let you wander around this place without protection,” Brienne had told her sternly.

Sansa found a bench that was still intact in the Godswood and stopped to rest. Brienne was aware of the baby, so Sansa made no attempts to hide the hand she rested gently on her stomach. She knew that she wasn’t showing yet, but she could feel subtle changes. Only a few weeks ago, Sansa’s lower stomach had been completely flat, hips bones jutting forward to create a dip in her stomach. She had been too thin due to all the stress. Now, though her hip bones were perhaps still too prominent, there was a noticeable outward curve between them. Sansa couldn’t really see it yet, but she could feel it and she had formed a habit of constantly laying her hand against her belly, anxious to note any differences.

“It hasn’t changed from an hour ago, my lady,” Brienne said, smirking a little.

Sansa attempted a smile back, but wasn’t quite able to manage it. Brienne lowered her eyes and asked, “Have you received any news of his whereabouts?”

Sansa glanced at Arya, who was looking out over Blackwater Bay. She tried to clear her throat from the lump that had lodged itself there. “He…Arya said…”

“He’s dead,” Arya said quietly, still looking out over the water. “He died with his brother.”

Sansa watched as Brienne’s face went through a number of different emotions from shock to horror to pity. Her sworn shield moved from her spot and dropped into a crouch in front of Sansa. Brienne’s large, armored hand came to rest over the one sitting in Sansa’s lap. “My lady, I am so sorry.”

Sansa’s hands took to trembling again and the tight feeling in her chest returned. She wanted to reason with herself that she needed to keep her focus on Jon and the line of succession and all the other pressing matters that needed her attention. But she couldn’t. It was like someone had separated her ribs and ripped out her beating heart and she was forced to live on without it. She didn’t know how to voice any of those feelings to the other two women present.

All she managed was, “I love him. What am I to do? I don’t-I don’t even have a body…” She choked on her tears then, dipped her head so that they could not see the mess of her face as it twisted in anguish. It was unladylike, she knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She had lived through Joffrey, Littlefinger, Ramsay, the Long Night…but she wondered if this would end her. Could one die of a broken heart?

Brienne asked quietly, gently, “They didn’t find his body? Have you checked, my lady? I know that you need…closure, and if you could bury him…”

“There was nothing left,” Arya said tonelessly. “There wasn’t much left of Gregor between the fire and the fall, so Sandor…there were other bodies around him, but it was impossible to distinguish…”

Sansa felt Brienne’s hand tighten on hers and she knew her sworn shield was worried that Arya’s description would only hurt her more. It didn’t matter though. Dead was dead and to Sansa it almost didn’t matter how it had happened since the result was the same. How Sandor died wouldn’t change the fact that she would never see him again. His manner of death mattered little when Sansa would never again be wrapped in his arms. She didn’t care what had taken him, only that she would never hear him repeat the words she had said to him that had angered him – _I love you_.

Sansa had held out hope that when he left he would return to her. She’d hoped that he would come back and still want her when the threat of death wasn’t so pressing. She had hoped desperately that one day he might feel for her what she felt for him. In the weeks after he left, she found herself imagining how he might tell her one day. Would it be when she birthed their first child? Would he lean down as she held their baby to her breast and brush a kiss against her brow and then tell her? Or would it happen as they made love, him hovering above her, their foreheads pressed together – would he whisper it against her lips? Perhaps it would be years later as they watched their children play – would he take her hand and say it quietly once he realized all she could give him?

Sansa would never hear it now that he was gone, she would never know what it was like to be loved back by someone she so desperately loved. It was a dream of the foolish little girl she thought she had outgrown and it made her angry at herself. _I should have known. Life is not song. Did I not learn that years ago?_

Sansa wiped the lingering tears away and stood from the bench. It was dark now, but thankfully there were plenty of torches lit along the serpentine to help guide the way back.

“The trial is tomorrow, yes?” Sansa asked Arya as they made their way back to the keep.

“Yes,” Arya answered. “Sansa, I haven’t seen Jon since before it happened. I don’t know how he will look.”

Sansa nodded, knowing it was just one more thing she would need to bear until she could escape from this awful city. “We’ll save him, Arya. I don’t know how just yet, but I won’t let him die. I can’t lose anyone else.”


	14. Arya V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things that keep Arya awake at night.

-Arya-

On the eve of Jon’s trial, Arya lay in bed awake and fully clothed. She had not changed into bed clothes or stripped down to only her tunic because she was sure at some point her restlessness would get the better of her and she’d get up and roam the castle. Though she did not wear Needle or her Valyrian steel dagger, they were strapped to her belt and lying on the bed beside her. She had done very little sleeping since she’d arrived in King’s Landing, but she it had probably been years since she’d had a full night’s sleep.

Even lying next to Gendry had failed to calm her, though it had been the night before what could’ve been the end of the world, so she guessed that had a lot to do with why she had lain awake. She wondered if she might sleep better if she joined him now. Part of her hated the fact that she was kept awake at night wondering what it would be like to lie next to him again, but another part could easily admit that he was her weakness. 

_I should have told him how relieved I am that he’s alive_. Arya had been sure she’d lost him when the Red Witch had taken him away from her so many years ago. And from what Gendry had told her, it had been Melisandre’s intention to sacrifice his life to help Stannis Baratheon. Gendry had survived her somehow, and then he’d survived the Long Night as well. _We aren’t so different,_ she thought. _We’re both survivors_.

If only Gendry had been able to see how much alike they were _before_ he’d been named Lord of Storm’s End. Gendry had imagined that there had been a chasm between them due to their class differences, but Arya had never cared about that. But now, he was a nobleman and would be expected to marry a lady who would help him run his castle. Arya’s hands balled into fists and she experienced a surge of anger so strong it startled her. The thought of someone marrying Gendry – _her Gendry_ – made her want to hit something. If only Daenerys Targaryen had left well enough alone, she and Gendry might have been together for the rest of their lives.

It was scary to think about. Any time Arya allowed herself to think about anything that could be permanent, dread would rise up in her and she’d cut off her thoughts immediately. Everything from her childhood that she’d thought she would have forever had been lost to her. Her father, her mother, Robb, Rickon…they were all dead. Nymeria was alive, but just as lost to her as the rest. Bran wasn’t _really_ Bran. Jon, while he had changed the least, was actually a Targaryen and finding out that his whole existence had been a lie had deeply affected him. The change Sansa had gone through made Arya wince to think about it. True, Sansa had been a pain in the arse as a child, but she was _just a child_. Sansa, aside from her quarrels with Arya, had been sweet and sensitive and kind. Sansa had been a dreamer who loved stories and loved with her whole heart.

Arya wasn’t sure her sister had a whole heart any more. All of the abuse Sansa had faced over the years had hardened her to the point that she could scarcely trust anyone. And now, with Sandor’s death…

Arya’s throat closed and the sting of tears pricked her eyes. Her fists tightened to the point that her short nails bit into her skin. She didn’t want to think about _that_, had pushed it down so often because facing that hurt would irrevocably change her. But it was Sandor’s face she saw when she closed her eyes, looking at her curiously as she thanked him for giving her a chance to get out. How many times had he saved her? She wished she could hate him still, and she was sure part of her still _did_ hate him, though not for Mycah. Arya could scarcely remember Mycah’s face. No, she hated Sandor for making her care about another person only to lose him. At some point, Sandor had become pack, as much as she hated to admit it. The fearsome Hound had shaped her life almost as much as her own father had. He had been rough and brutal at times, but it was what Arya had needed. With growing realization, Arya acknowledged that the two of them were so alike in their mannerisms that she _could_ have been his daughter.

Sandor understood her rage, but rather than trying to smother it, he’d given her an outlet for it. He’d understood the need for revenge too, though at the end of his life, he’d begged Arya to let go of her own revenge. Why hadn’t he been able to do the same? If he had known that Sansa was pregnant with their child, would it have made a difference?

A quiet sound just outside her door pulled Arya away from her ruminations. She pulled her dagger loose and quietly slid from her bed. She stilled just beside the door and listened, trying to determine what was happening on the other side. There was the muffled sound of feet moving against the stone floor as though someone was pacing. As gently as she could, she unbarred her door and threw it open, startling Gendry so badly he jumped.

“Arya,” he gasped, letting out a shaky breath.

“What in the Seven Hells are you doing?” She hissed at him, looking both ways down the corridor. There were likely guards stationed every few hundred feet.

“I needed to speak with you,” he said.

“At this hour?”

His bright blue eyes ran over her figure, obviously noting that she was still fully dressed. He wasn’t. He wore only a tunic and breeches and hadn’t even bothered to put on boots. “You shouldn’t go anywhere without protection,” she told him angrily, noting that he was wearing neither armor nor a sword.

“I hadn’t decided yet if I was going to bother you _at this hour_,” he said smartly. “But you threw open the door before I could make a decision. And obviously you weren’t sleeping.”

“I don’t sleep,” Arya said in a clipped tone. “At least, not a lot.”

Gendry nodded and looked away from her. “Me either.”

Arya exhaled noisily in annoyance. “Why are you here?”

Gendry scratched at the stubble growing on his chin, looking both thoughtful and nervous. “I-uh…don’t think I’m up for being king.”

She couldn’t help herself; she _rolled _her eyes, and then grabbed a handful of his tunic and pulled him into her room, shutting the door behind them. “No shit,” she said to him.

“But you said that it’s likely…”

“No, it’s not _just likely_, it’s probable.”

He fell into a seat near her bed and hung his head. He looked so defeated and exhausted that Arya had an urge to comfort him, but effectively pushed it aside. Instead, she went and sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for him to speak.

“Would it matter to anyone if I said I don’t want it?”

Arya almost groaned at the phrase she’d heard so many times recently that she was sick to death of that combination of words. Jon had said it over and over again to the point she wanted to hit him. “It wouldn’t matter,” she told him. “Jon didn’t want it either, but it didn’t prevent any problems between him and Daenerys.”

Gendry looked up at her. “Any chance Jon will become king instead?”

“Doubtful,” Arya said. She tried not to think about what Jon’s trial would entail. “He murdered the Queen so if he walks away with his life, he will be considered fortunate.”

“There were letters, you know,” Gendry said, meeting her eyes again. The light from the candle that still burned on her bedside table illuminated his face and Arya had to shake herself mentally to keep from being distracted. In her weaker moments, she was still struck by how handsome he was, how brightly those blue eyes could burn.

“Letters?” She asked, looking away from him towards the flickering candle.

“Aye, from Lord Varys,” Gendry stood from the chair and walked to the other side of the room, seemingly too agitated to sit. “I received a letter from him while I was still at Winterfell explaining that Jon is the true heir to the Iron Throne. Of course, I couldn’t read it…Davos had to help me. Lady Sansa received one as well. Lord Royce, that big bloke from the mountains…”

Arya’s mouth twitched and she fought a smile. “He’s from the Vale.”

“Aye, which is in the mountains,” Gendry said impatiently. “He received the same sort of letter. If many of the other lords received letters like that, then they’d know what’s going on and…would they _want _him to be put to death? It’s just that…the Kingslayer killed a king to save King’s Landing and he was pardoned…”

Arya’s eyes narrowed at him. “Who told you _that_? The Kingslayer stabbed his king in the back and slit his throat too. I don’t think a comparison to the Kingslayer will help Jon.”

Gendry gave her a look that indicated he was losing patience. “Arya, why do you think he killed King…whatever his name was…”

“Aerys,” Arya replied flatly.

“Your brother mentioned once to your sister that it was to save the people of King’s Landing from being burned to death by Wildfire. Ser Brienne mentioned the same thing once. She said that Ser Jaime had told her that he murdered…ah…._Aerys_ to stop him from igniting the Wildfire and killing everyone in the capitol.”

Arya was impressed that Gendry had taken in so much information about the Kingslayer’s history. Arya had never had much of a quarrel with Jaime Lannister – he’d never been on her list after all – but she hadn’t put much thought into the claims that he’d murdered his king to save innocent lives. Arya had always thought that Jaime had killed Aerys because he was tired of the Mad King’s shit.

“You think that Jon could be pardoned for killing Daenerys?” There was more than a hint of disbelief in Arya’s voice as she questioned Gendry.

“I don’t know,” he groaned. “If Ser Jaime can be forgiven…”

“Forgiven is too strong a word,” Arya said. “He lived with the moniker _Kingslayer_ for the rest of his life.”

“Fine, if not completely forgiven, why could Jon not be pardoned as well?”

Arya pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed thoughtfully as she considered Gendry’s words. The habit was one she thought she’d left behind in childhood, but more and more, she found herself reverting back to her old practice. Gendry had a point though. If Jaime Lannister could be pardoned for murdering his king, a man who had been king for years at that point, why couldn’t Jon be pardoned for murdering a Queen who had just destroyed half of King’s Landing and had ruled for less than a day?

“I’m not sure Jon wants to be pardoned,” Arya admitted, hating Jon’s stupid honor more than ever at that moment. “If the lords don’t order him put to death, he may die under the weight of his own guilt.” She had meant it to sound like a jape, but it came out worriedly. The words were more accurate than she wanted to admit. “Besides, I don’t know if anyone has the power to pardon him except the next king. If you want to pardon him, fine; but I thought you might put up a tougher fight about it.”

Gendry squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was not at all implying that I would accept being…king.” He spat out the last word as though it left a bitter taste in his mouth. “I only meant that maybe Jon’s life can be saved and if he is pardoned of his…crime,” again, Gendry tripped over the word as though it didn’t belong in the sentence, “then maybe he could…be king?”

Arya almost wanted to laugh at Gendry’s simple, innocent suggestion. She knew he didn’t understand politics – she barely understood them herself – but the idea that Jon could ever be king after having murdered the previous ruler seemed preposterous. Arya was preparing to face her brother’s death sentence at worst or fight to have his sentence commuted to life on the Wall at best. An ending in which Jon wiggled his way out of a death sentence _and_ became king was outrageous and laughable.

“You need to get some rest,” Arya suggested, not wanting to speculate any more on Jon’s fate. “We have a long day tomorrow.”

Gendry clearly hadn’t been expecting to be dismissed because he frowned at her, opened his mouth to say something, and then shook his head. “Fine. Good night, Arya,” he slipped through the door before Arya could answer him. 

Arya had half-hoped he would stay in her room with her. She had hoped that maybe he needed something tangible to hold onto in this time of turbulence. Dejectedly, she realized she was unlikely to be able to bring him any comfort. She knew that she’d hurt him when she rejected his proposal, but surely he must have known that she would never agree to something like that. She’d told him years ago that she was not a lady and that fact had not changed the night Gendry had asked her to be his wife. Arya had not spent any time with Gendry after his proposal and before her trip to King’s Landing. She was never affected awkwardness of a situation, so it wasn’t this that had kept her away. She was almost afraid that she would give in to Gendry if she spent more time with him, even knowing that being his ‘lady’ would bring her nothing but misery.

But she was also fairly certain that she loved him, so staying away had been difficult. After traveling to King’s Landing and gaining a bit of perspective, thanks to Sandor, Arya had been thrilled to see Gendry and had all but forgotten her reluctance to be around him. Gendry had clearly not forgotten the rejection though because he made it abundantly clear that she was not welcome in his room.

_Bugger that_, Arya thought, channeling the Hound’s attitude as she hopped off her bed. She grabbed her sword belt and loosely strapped it to her hips. Gendry had only been gone a few minutes, so it was unlikely that he was asleep. She didn’t hesitate outside his door as she checked to see if it was open. The idiot had left it unbarred.

Arya slipped inside and her eyes narrowed immediately at the figure on the bed. She couldn’t see him very clearly, but she could tell he was sitting up.

“It isn’t safe to leave your door unbarred,” she commented.

“It isn’t polite to just barge in,” he countered.

“And you would know what’s polite?”

He scoffed, “Of course, I’m a lord now, aren’t I?” He did a terrible job of hiding the bitterness in his voice, but then, Gendry rarely tried to hide anything. 

She walked slowly toward where Gendry sat on his bed, trying to give her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, instead keeping her hands clasped behind her back. 

“Why are you here?” Gendry echoed her earlier question to him, albeit more politely than she had asked.

_Try honesty for once_, she thought. It wasn’t that she cared about sleeping alone. Being on her own didn’t bother Arya. Normally, she preferred being alone as to being in the company of anyone else – except when it came to Gendry apparently. 

“I wanted to see you,” she said, her voice not conveying the emotion she was feeling. _I’m glad you’re still alive. I should’ve told you before. I missed you all those years I thought you were dead. I missed you these long weeks since I left Winterfell_.

“You just saw me,” he said, an edge to his voice that she wasn’t sure she could soften. “And you kicked me out of your room.”

“You did the same earlier,” she said.

“Damn it, Arya!” He stood up suddenly and he was towering over her, their bodies just a couple of inches apart. “You can’t come in here and pretend nothing happened between us.”

She cocked her head to the side curiously, though Gendry likely couldn’t see it. “I’m not pretending nothing happened. On the contrary, I’m trying to address it.”

“_No_, Arya. You can’t pick and choose what happened and what didn’t happen.”

That old anger that Arya had struggled to control as a child, which had been carefully managed for a long time thanks to the Faceless Men, had been revitalized in the face of Gendry’s stubbornness and she found herself unclasping her hands and pushing against his chest. “I didn’t reject you! How many times do I need to say it? Are you rejecting me?”

She hated how suggestion of weakness that came with asking the question, though she managed to keep most of the emotion out of her voice.

“Gods, Arya, you drive me crazy!” Gendry all but shouted, his face dipping low, so close to her own. “Why do you do this, hmm? Why play with me? I never pegged you for the kind of woman that played games.”

“I’m not playing games,” she said quietly, trying to rein in her temper. “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“Well, you are,” he said. “And you have. I don’t expect you to feel anything for me like I feel for you, but is it too much for me to ask that you leave me alone?”

Had she not been so controlled, she might have reeled back as though he’d slapped her. That’s what it felt like – a slap to the face. She didn’t want to leave him alone and she didn’t want _him_ to leave _her _alone. But maybe the damage was already done. She couldn’t give him what he’d asked for all those weeks ago. 

“Did you mean it?” She hadn’t even meant to say anything, but the words left her mouth of their own accord.

Gendry was quiet for a moment and if she could see him, he’d probably have that familiar puzzled look on his handsome face. “Mean what? That you hurt me?”

“No. Did you mean it when you said that…back at Winterfell, when you asked me to be your lady,” she cringed at the thought of those words. “Did you mean it when…”

“I meant it,” he said, finally understanding what she was asking. His arms came around her waist and he was hauling her against him, dropping his chin to the top of her head. “It’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she said. “I almost hoped that it was part of your drunken babbling.” Suddenly, she was sad. If Gendry saying he loved her hadn’t been drunken babbling, then neither had his request that she be a lady.

“It wasn’t,” he said, his breath stirring her hair. “I know you don’t feel that way. But you also have to understand that I can’t go back to…whatever we were before that moment. I can’t just be your friend. I can’t be a casual lover.” His fingers were running lightly over her spine, and though she was wearing a tunic and a jerkin, she could swear the felt the heat of his skin. She found that at some point her hands had crept up his chest. The hard muscles beneath the fabric of his tunic were distracting. 

“What if I did feel that way?” She asked mildly, flicking her eyes to where she knew his face to be, though it was still much too dark to make out his expression.

Gendry’s arms tightened around her and he let out a whoosh of air, as though she’d knocked the breath out of him. “Arya,” his voice sounded strained, as though he were pleading with her for something but she didn’t know what.

She lifted herself on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck. That was all it took for him to come to her, his mouth pressed hard to hers, his hands traveling from her waist to her hair, his fingers threading through the strands. When Gendry pulled away for a moment, Arya _whimpered_, bereft at the loss of contact. He came back quickly enough, softer this time, and she opened her mouth beneath his, sucking his tongue into her mouth.

_This is right, this is right, this is right_, her mind and her heart and her body all chanted together. Somehow she’d walked away from this, but she couldn’t fathom at the moment how she’d managed it. They undressed one another just as quickly and efficiently as they had that first night, but when they fell into bed, Gendry was the one atop her this time. She tried to reverse their positions, but he pinned her down with his hips.

“Tell me you want this,” he whispered, his breath hot against her neck.

“I want it,” she gasped, unable to stay still with him pressed against her.

“And will you regret it?”

“No,” her hips bucked beneath him, desperately looking for friction.

Without any more warning, he slid into her, hissing in appreciation.

“You’re mine,” she told him, her nails digging into his back as he pounded into her. “_Mine_.”

Maybe he would marry someone else, though she couldn’t bear the thought of it. He was expected to marry a lady and she would never be a lady – that hadn’t changed. Maybe they would part ways once this was all over with and they would be forced to accept that the two of them just couldn’t fit together. But as he moved above her, as her body clenched around his, as he did things to her that made her see stars, Arya couldn’t imagine a better fit.


	15. Gendry IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the dragon pit scene in the finale plays out quite differently...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First apology, sorry this is so long...I think it's like 5500 words or something...
> 
> More apologies to follow at the bottom lol

Gendry was fidgeting in his chair, unable to calm himself enough to sit still. Every few seconds, his eyes would meet Arya’s and her face would soften almost imperceptibly, as though she had pity for him. He didn’t know what was coming, but he hoped it wasn’t another war. The Unsullied were calling for Jon’s head, everyone knew that much. If Jon made it out of the Dragon Pit with his life, then he would be fortunate. Arya did not seem worried, even to his well-trained eye where she was concerned. She had insisted earlier as she had pulled her clothes on that if the Unsullied were truly determined that Jon should have to die, that they wouldn’t have kept him alive all this time. Her logic seemed reasonable.

On the other hand, Grey Worm likely was smart enough to understand what would happen to him and his army if he murdered Jon Snow without a trial. The fury of the Stark sisters would mean the end of the Unsullied and Grey Worm was smart enough to realize that. Movement at the mouth of the tunnel caught Gendry’s attention and he watched as both Tyrion and Jon Snow were brought forth to the center of the pit. Grey Worm shoved Jon down to his knees in the dirt before glaring around the circle of the gathered lords and ladies.

Gendry watched as Sansa Stark’s hands gripped at the fabric of her dress and she seemed to move forward in her seat as though she was fighting the urge to get up. Arya was much cooler, turning a calm eye toward her brother and giving him a small nod. Jon nodded back, looking older and wearier than Gendry had ever seen him. He’d been a prisoner for weeks now and it was clear that it had taken its toll. His beard was long, untrimmed, and dirty. His dark hair fell past his shoulders and was matted with filth. Jon wore only a thin tunic and breeches, and Gendry could clearly see the outline of his ribs peeking through the pale skin of his chest where his tunic opened.

“Have you been treated well?” Sansa addressed her brother, still seated and looking very much a lady, though Gendry could practically see the tension radiating off her.

Jon’s dark eyes softened. “Yes, my lady.”

It was an obvious lie, but it wasn’t as though Jon would tell her all he’d suffered.

Sansa reluctantly turned her attention to Tyrion. “And you, my lord?”

Tyrion gave a dramatic sigh. “I have had worse sleeping accommodations, though the food leaves something to be desired…”

Sansa’s cerulean eyes narrowed at the jape and Tyrion shut up quickly enough, bowing his head, though it was likely to hide a smirk. Sansa then turned her attention to Grey Worm.

“Grey Worm,” she said, speaking calmly and clearly, though Gendry could see the fire in her eyes. “I believe you best course of action would be to turn over the prisoners to this council.”

_Not likely_, Gendry thought as he watched Grey Worm’s face contort in rage.

“No, Lady Stark,” he bit out in his thick accent. “These two men are our prisoners and this is our city. The Unsullied will decide what to do with our prisoners.”

Sansa, who had calmly kept her seat up to this point, stood up then and smoothed out the wrinkles on her skirt before addressing Grey Worm once again. “If you look outside the walls of _your city_, you’ll find thousands of Northmen who will explain to you why harming Jon Snow is not in your interest.”

“And you will find thousands of Unsullied who believe that it is,” Grey Worm countered, glaring daggers at Sansa.

_It’s a bluff_, Gendry thought in wonder as he watched the two of them. If Grey Worm were speaking truly – if he truly believed he had the luxury of doing what he wanted with his prisoners, Jon Snow would not have been kept alive all this time. And Grey Worm could threaten Sansa Stark with the wrath of the Unsullied all he wanted, but Gendry knew their numbers were greatly diminished. The Northern army had suffered great losses as well, but still had a greater number than Grey Worm could boast.

“Your Northerners may be quick to forgive,” Yara Greyjoy drawled, interrupting the glaring match between Sansa and Grey Worm. “The Ironborn are not. I swore to follow Daenerys Targaryen…”

“You swore to follow a tyrant,” Sansa hissed, casting her gaze at Yara.

“She freed us from a tyrant,” Yara insisted, her voice growing louder. She had been sitting slouched in her chair, but now she sat up, perched on its edge, ready to leap at a moment’s notice. Sansa, for her part, did not look alarmed in the slightest. Yara continued, “Cersei is gone because of her, and Jon Snow put a knife in her heart. Let the Unsullied give him what he deserves.”

“Say another word about killing my brother,” Gendry’s head snapped around to Arya. “And I’ll cut your throat.” She said it calmly and coldly as she stared right at the Queen of the Iron Islands.

Yara opened her mouth as if to say something else, but Davos got to his feet and interjected, “Friends, _please_. Has there not been enough violence?” He turned to Grey Worm, “Torgo Nudho, am I saying that properly?” Grey Worm cast his eyes down at Tyrion, seemingly willing to listen to what he had to say. “If it weren’t for you and your men, we would’ve lost the war with the Dead. This country owes you a debt it can never repay but let us try. Take your men and settle in the Reach. There is good land there.”

“Unsullied are soldiers,” Grey Worm said. “We are not farmers. We do not have families. Now, we only want justice for our slain queen.”

“It is not for you to decide,” Tyrion said quietly.

“You are not here to speak!” Grey Worm snapped.

“You are not the proper authority to decide on what form of justice should be enacted,” Sansa piped up. “The new ruler of Westeros should decide the fate of Jon and Tyrion.” Sansa’s eyes fell on her former husband and Gendry saw her brow furrow in confusion. “What, exactly, are the chargers that Lord Tyrion faces? Why is he being held prisoner?”

“He is a traitor,” Grey Worm said, though he didn’t sound as convinced as he had when discussing Jon. “He freed his brother.”

A perfectly manicured auburn brow arched in question. “Oh? So he released a prisoner. It’s true enough that that could be considered treason.” Here, Sansa paused and Gendry saw her turn her head slightly, and though he couldn’t see what she was looking at, he saw Brienne of Tarth on the other side of Sansa, giving a small nod. “And why was Ser Jaime being held prisoner?”

“Lannister was trying to cross our lines to get into the city.”

“Why is that a crime?” Sansa asked, shaking her head in confusion, though it was clear to Gendry that it was mostly for show. He knew where she was going with this.

“It is the assumption that he was entering the city to rejoin his sister and betray Queen Daenerys.”

“Assumption?” Her brows shot up her forehead and she cocked her head to the side. “You arrested a man for freeing another man because you _assumed_ he would betray you?”

“His body was found with Cersei Lannister,” Grey Worm argued, his patience growing thinner by the minute.

“I understand,” Sansa said, “But you cannot judge a man guilty before he commits the crime, no? And the man who betrayed you did so after being freed, not before.”

“And,” Tyrion added, casting a wary glance at Grey Worm, “My brother had no intention of taking up arms against your queen. He was merely trying to save our sister’s life.”

Grey Worm turned to snarl at Tyrion “Our queen? Was she not your queen too, Lannister?”

Tyrion nodded. “She was. But she was misguided and perhaps part of that fault lies with me. If you want to punish me for poor guidance, go on with it. But to punish me for freeing my brother is a farce. And to punish Jon Snow for enacting justice is even more absurd.”

_Oh, you bloody idiot_, Gendry thought, sensing that Grey Worm’s reactions to Tyrion’s words would not be good before Tyrion had even finished speaking. Grey Worm predictably struck Tyrion so hard across the cheek that it knocked him into the dirt. Sansa’s hands balled into fists and Gendry saw that Ser Brienne was now gripping the pommel of her sword, clearly ready to spring at a moment’s notice.

“Murdering the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms is not justice,” Grey Worm hissed. “That is Lannister logic, is it not? You think your brother was justified in killing my Queen’s father, and now you think Jon Snow is justified in killing my Queen. You do not know justice.”

“Again, it is not up to you to decide what is and what is not justice,” Sansa said. “You may claim that this city is yours, but you are outsiders and you do not have a ruler. Punishment of these two men should be decided by the King or Queen of the Seven Kingdoms…”

“And who is that?” Grey Worm demanded. “Do not tell me that you expect met to accept Jon Snow…_Aegon Targaryen_ as the new King. It may be your practice to seat murderers on your throne, but that is not the way of our queen…”

Sansa gave a caustic laugh and stepped further down into the pit, her skirts trailing along the steps and collecting dirt, though it didn’t seem to bother her. She stopped at the bottom and surveyed Grey Worm and his men for a moment. “It is laughable that you do not consider your queen a murderer considering that she killed _thousands_ of innocent people the day she burned the city to the ground. It is not up to you to decide who rules Westeros, no more than it is your decision to determine justice for these prisoners.”

“What are you suggesting?” Yara Greyjoy spoke up again. “A kingsmoot?”

“Why do we need a kingsmoot?” Sansa asked, turning to stare at Yara coldly. “The line of succession is rather clear, is it not?”

Gendry glanced over at Yara, who he realized with a start, was glaring at _him_. 

_Oh, fuck_, he thought, knowing once again what came next. He dropped his eyes to his shoes, certainly not ready for what was about to happen. Yara Greyjoy was clearly displeased at what Sansa was suggesting. He couldn’t look up at anyone else, couldn’t bear the curious eyes of the other lords who were present, likely wondering how a bastard had risen so impressively.

“Speak plainly,” Grey Worm demanded.

Sansa gave the leader of the Unsullied a sweet smile that may have charmed a lesser man, and then explained, “Daenerys Targaryen is dead. She was not the last of her line as everyone believed, but rather…”

“No,” Grey Worm said. “I will not accept this. Jon Snow cannot murder his queen only to be named king…”

“I understand that,” Sansa said, nodding as if to ensure Grey Worm that she was in agreement with him. “I would never suggest that a man on trial should be named king and decide his own fate. So it would then fall to Jon’s heir, would it not?”

Grey Worm made a noise that might have been a snort and looked down at Jon in disgust, before turning that disgust back on Sansa. “You, my lady? Are you now suggesting that you are his heir and so should decide what is done with him?”

“Seven, _no_,” Sansa exclaimed, blue eyes going wide in surprise. “I’m a Stark, after all, and Jon is only half a Stark. No Stark has ever ruled from King’s Landing and I am not suggesting that at all. Jon, being a Targaryen, _would be_ Daenerys Targaryen’s heir, it’s true; but in light of the charges he faces, it would then fall to Daenerys’s next nearest relative.” Sansa paused, seemingly for dramatic effect as she looked questioningly at all the lords and ladies present. “Am I correct?”

There were nods and murmurs from the nobles seated on the stage. Gendry buried his face in his hands and shook his head, but then found himself peeking through his fingers to watch anyway. He did not like where she was going with this at all, but he couldn’t look away.

Grey Worm stepped closer to Sansa, which was a mistake on his part as at that moment, Arya, Brienne, Lord Royce, and Howland Reed all rose to their feet quickly, eyes trained on Grey Worm. Even Jon Snow had leapt up from the ground, his chains clattering against one another at his wrists as he gave Grey Worm a warning look that plainly said _Stay away from my sister_.

Gendry watched as a corner of Sansa’s mouth twitched with the promise of a smile. “You see, Grey Worm, there is no need to hold a council or hold a kingsmoot because Jon’s heir sits among us, Targaryen _and_ Baratheon blood running through his veins.”

It seemed to hit him then. Gendry watched realization dawn on Grey Worm’s face. His expressions went from irritation to confusion to realization to outrage in a matter of seconds. His dark eyes snapped to Gendry’s. Gendry sat up straighter in his seat, lifting his chin. _I may not like this, but this is my duty, is it not?_

“Him?” Grey Worm said, staring at Gendry. “He is what he is because Daenerys Targaryen made him such.”

“Aye, it was Her Grace’s decision to legitimize Gendry,” Davos spoke up, watching Gendry steadily. “Hard to argue with what your queen made possible.”

“She would have known that he shares blood with her,” Sansa said sensibly. “After all, much of Robert Baratheon’s claim to the throne was based on his grandmother being a Targaryen. Your queen was fully aware of what she was doing when she legitimized Gendry. She may have even been trying to insure that she had an heir considering her…fertility problems.”

Grey Worm glared at Sansa, clearly angered that she would speak aloud about Daenerys’s barrenness, though it had not exactly been a secret. Sansa, for her part, did not seem the least bit intimidated by Grey Worm or his handful of soldiers. She looked around at those gathered at the meeting.

“Are we in agreement that the line of succession is clear?” Her voice rose as she addressed the lords and ladies.

“Aye,” Davos said immediately at the same time Brienne said, “Yes.”

There were several other nods and murmurs, but then Yara said, “No!”

Sansa clasped her hands in front of her and tilted her head to the side, regarding Yara like she was a particularly puzzling nuisance she couldn’t quite figure out. “What is your objection, Your Grace?”

Yara stood and looked around at the other nobles, much as Sansa had. “Jon Snow killed the queen I supported, and this man,” he eyes shot to Gendry, “Supports Jon Snow.”

The announcement did not have as grand a reaction as Yara likely hoped as the other nobles failed to proclaim indignation at this fact. 

Lord Royce said, “He supported Daenerys too, did he not? If he was in opposition to her rule, why did she name him the legitimate heir of Storm’s End? He must have been loyal to her as well,” Lord Royce stood up to his impressive height and addressed Grey Worm and his men. “Many of us were loyal to both Her Grace and to Jon Snow. It is no surprise that of the two, Lord Baratheon would still be loyal to Jon Snow.”

Davos nodded in agreement. “The lad followed who he believed was the right leader. Did you not do the same?” Davos turned his eyes to Grey Worm. “The queen you put your faith in made mistakes. The King that Lord Baratheon put his faith in made mistakes as well. Who Lord Baratheon supported should have no bearing on the fact that he is Her Grace’s heir.”

“I don’t think that anyone will ask you to bend the knee to Lord Baratheon,” Sansa said, her expression softening as she stared up at Yara from the bottom of the steps. She took her skirts in her hand and slowly climbed back up until she was a few feet from Yara. “You are Queen of the Iron Islands and I do not expect you to submit to anyone. However, as the Seven Kingdoms are not _your_ kingdom, I would hope that you would refrain from meddling in its affairs.”

Yara was quiet for several long seconds, then her eyes snapped back to Gendry. “Lord Baratheon, is this true? You would allow the Iron Islands to remain independent under your rule?”

Gendry blinked stupidly at her several times before finding his voice. “Oh, aye. I, uh, thought Queen Daenerys had already made it clear that you were to rule independently?” He looked at the other lords seated upon the dais and then down at Grey Worm. “I don’t intend to undo the things Her Grace accomplished.”

“So you want this then?” Grey Worm bit out through gritted teeth, glaring angrily between Gendry and Sansa.

_I don’t want it_, Gendry thought to himself, suppressing the sudden urge to laugh, because how many times had Jon said the same? He cleared his throat and fought down the urge to laugh at the whole situation, then said, “It is my duty, is it not? Seems like what people want matters little.”

“And the Seven Kingdoms need a king,” Arya added. Gendry looked at her and noticed that her eyes looked…sad. _As if you weren’t already untouchable_, Gendry thought_, now you support a decision which will only drive us further apart_.

Grey Worm was incensed, that much was certain. It seemed that he had already determined what would happen next. Gendry knew that he couldn’t allow the council to make the decision, nor could he take in under advisement. He would need to act quickly and confidently. He stood then and stepped down to stand next to Sansa. She gave him an encouraging look.

Gendry took a deep breath and addressed Grey Worm. “You will turn the prisoners over to me. Lord Tyrion is to be released immediately. It does not appear that he has committed a legitimate crime.”

Grey Worm gave a terse nod to one of the other Unsullied, who moved to release Tyrion from his chains. Jon, who had been standing silently, seemingly awaiting his fate, now turned his eyes to Gendry. _This is the tricky part_, Gendry thought, trying to keep his expression neutral.

“And what of Jon Snow?” Grey Worm was doing a poor job at concealing his disgust with his other prisoner. 

“As I said,” Gendry said, fighting to keep his voice strong, “you will turn him over to me. I don’t intend to release him without punishment.” His eyes flicked to Sansa’s wondering if she would look angry, but instead, she looked intrigued. “I plan to take it under consideration, but as of now, I believe that a sentence of life at the Wall would be an appropriate punishment.”

Grey Worm’s countenance changed minutely, as though he had relaxed just a bit. “The Night’s Watch?”

“Yes. Murderers and rapists have been sent there for centuries to pay for their crimes,” Gendry said, quite unnecessarily but wanting to strengthen his argument that Jon Snow would face punishment. “If you turn him over to my custody, I can make sure that he is sent to the Wall, away from society – if you promise to take your men and leave Westeros.”

“Why would we leave?”

“You said yourself that you are not farmers or families. But Westeros is done with war. Take your men and go.” _Please_, Gendry thought,_ no more bloodshed._

“You accomplished what you set out to do,” Jon Snow spoke quietly, barely looking up. “Cersei Lannister was removed from the throne and a Targaryen has been restored to the throne. You have not failed.”

“You will not speak to me,” Grey Worm growled. “You will spend your days wasting away on the Wall. You will not have your throne or your family or the love of your Northmen. It is the next best thing to a slow death.”

_Does he know that Jon was Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch_, Gendry wondered. He didn’t speak as though he knew it. Gendry was aware that sending Jon back to the Wall was hardly a punishment – in addition, the Night’s Watch had little reason to exist anymore, but Grey Worm seemed unaware of that as well.

Jon was kept in chains until the Unsullied departed, if only for appearance purposes. Later that evening, Gendry made sure that Jon received one of the finer rooms in the part of the Red Keep that still stood. Jon was commanded to stay in his rooms for the remainder of the day for his own safety, at least until the Unsullied departed the following day. But Gendry had commanded that Jon be brought to him late that evening, along with both Stark girls. So as Gendry sat in his solar at evening meal, unable to touch his food as he waited on his guests, Davos watched him worriedly.

“I know it’s not something you expected, lad,” Davos said, “but you’ve done well so far.”

“I don’t intend to do it for long,” Gendry commented, earning him a bewildered look for Ser Davos.

A knock on his door stopped Davos from voicing his concerns and he called out to the guards at his door to let his guest enter. Arya came in then, taking a seat across from him. She looked lighter somehow, a weight taken off her shoulders knowing that her brother would live.

“Sansa will be here shortly,” Arya said.

“So will Jon,” Gendry told her, meeting her eyes.

She showed little on her face, it was true, but he saw the surprise in her eyes. “Is it safe for him to be seen in your chambers?”

Gendry shrugged. “I’m having him brought in chains,” he explained, giving her an apologetic smile. “Hope that serves to keep down suspicion.”

Arya nodded, but didn’t ask any questions, seeming to understand that all would be revealed in due time. Sansa arrived moments later, looking considerably wearier than Arya. Her already pale skin seemed ashen and dark circles ringed he eyes. His eyes were drawn to her belly, a small swelling visible beneath her skirts. She took the seat next to Arya, folding her hands in her lap and casting her icy gaze to Gendry.

“I want to apologize, Your Grace,” she said politely. “I know you weren’t duly prepared for what happened in the dragon pit today…”

He waved off her apology. “We did what we had to do,” he said quickly, praying that she didn’t hate him for what _he_ was about to do. “I know that I am not qualified to rule…”

“That’s what advisors are for,” Sansa said, nodding at Ser Davos. “I imagine you will have your pick of the best between Ser Davos and Lord Tyrion and even Ser Brienne.”

Another knock came at the door and a moment later, Jon walked in. His beard had been trimmed and he’d bathed, thank the Gods. He saw his sisters and gasped audibly, making both Stark girls turn towards the door.

“Jon!” Arya was up and in his arms before Sansa had even stood from her chair. But then Jon was holding both his sisters, one under each arm.

“Your Grace,” Jon addressed Gendry, “I want to thank you for your mercy for the sake of my sisters…”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Gendry said, only barely suppressing his own ‘Your Grace’ at the end. Old habits died hard, after all. “You may not like what I’m about to say.”

Gendry felt Arya’s eyes on him then and did his best not to squirm. He remembered his manners and indicated the chairs on the other side of the table. “Please, have a seat.” _You’re going to need to sit for this_.

The Starks sat down, still sharing relieved smiles between them. Jon sat in the middle, and Sansa sat on his right, grasping her hand in his, seemingly unable to let him go. Jon squeezed her hand back. “And thank you,” he told Sansa, then turned to his youngest sister, “Both of you, for having my back. I was prepared to accept my sentence, but the two of you…”

“Surely you didn’t think we’d let them kill you?” Arya scoffed. “I’ll not be deprived of another brother.”

“It isn’t just us,” Sansa told him. “The Northmen still see you as their King.” Her eyes darted to Gendry. “I do not know what His Grace has planned, but if you were ever free again…”

“Sansa,” Jon said gently, but with a slight note of impatience. “The Night’s Watch is for life. The chances that I’ll die in the service and be brought back _again_…”

“There is no further use for the Night’s Watch, is there?” Arya cut in, her eyes moving to Gendry’s, though he quickly looked away. “I suppose Gendry could order you to be confined to the Wall…”

“You need to address him as _Your Grace_, Arya,” Sansa said.

Arya snorted at the same time Gendry muttered that titles weren’t necessary among friends. Jon, though, was looking at him curiously. “Your Grace, is that not the punishment you gave me?”

Gendry steepled his hands in front of him, tossing an anxious look at Davos. He took a moment to gather his courage and then said, “Once the Unsullied depart, there will be no reason for this farce concerning your punishment at the Wall. I will give you the details now, as long as they are kept quiet until the Unsullied leave.”

Jon’s brow lowered in confusion, and his two sisters’ expressions shifted to match his. Gendry wasn’t trying to be suspenseful, but his nerves were getting the best of him. His palms were sweaty, so he wiped the moisture on his fancy breeches and stood up. He looked first to Ser Davos, whose countenance showed that he knew Gendry was about to do something he was uncomfortable with. Gendry lacked the eloquence he felt was better suited for what he was about to say, but there was no helping it at this point.

“I’ve thought of a more appropriate punishment for Jon than spending his life on the Wall,” he said, eyes darting between the three siblings.

Rage sparked in Arya’s eyes, while fear became evident in Sansa’s. Jon merely looked more confused.

“As there is no Night’s Watch and as I’ve no desire to kill you for enacting justice,” his eyes settled on Jon and he took a deep breath, laying his hands on the table to steady himself from the sudden light-headedness he felt. _Should’ve eaten_. “I think that a more suitable punishment would be to gift you with a title you never wanted.”

The three of them sat still as statues, and Gendry wondered how much more he would have to spell out. His throat had gone dry, so he lifted his previously untouched wine to his lips and took several large gulps. Inadvertently, he met Arya’s eyes across the table. She was glaring at him as realization seemed to dawn on her.

“And what title would that be, Your Grace?” Her voice was flat, but her storm grey eyes flashed dangerously.

“I intend to pardon Jon,” he said quickly, “And then I plan to abdicate. I have never ruled over anything. I was unprepared to rule Storm’s End and the thought of me ruling Seven Kingdoms is laughable. If a kingsmoot is necessary at the time I abdicate, so be it, but…” He looked to Jon, probably a bit pleadingly. “Everyone knows that you are the true King of the Seven Kingdoms. You have a better claim than me. You had a better claim than Queen Daenerys. I don’t want to strap you to a fate you didn’t want, but…you _are_ the true King.”

Jon’s eyes dropped to the table, watching a flickering candle, the orange flame’s reflection dancing in his dark grey eyes. Sansa’s hand crept up onto his shoulder, squeezing to reassure him of her presence. 

“He’s King in the North,” Sansa said, looking up at Gendry. “Surely if you are going to pardon him you would let him come home?”

Gendry shifted nervously. “Well, my lady, I intend to abdicate. I will not rule. And begging your pardons, but Jon Snow was the King in the North. Aegon Targaryen on the other hand…”

“Oh, don’t be stupid!” Arya hissed as she stood from her chair. “That’s a terrible argument. The North is an independent kingdom still, is it not?”

“It is,” Gendry said, watching her as she stalked around the table to stand at his side.

“Jon is the King in the North. If he is pardoned, he should come home! Northerners will not bend the knee to Jon if he rules in the _South_. Jon ruling from King’s Landing will not make the Northern lords more likely to rejoin the Seven Kingdoms.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Gendry said. He didn’t care a fig whether or not the North ever rejoined the Seven Kingdoms. All the Starks seemed in favor of Northern independence, which Gendry wholeheartedly accepted. 

“Then who will rule in the North?” Arya poked him in his side.

“Arya!” Sansa hissed, evidently scandalized that her sister would poke the current king.

“Sansa,” Jon said quietly, his eyes trailing over her face.

“Yes?” She asked, concern marring her pretty features as she looked to her brother.

“No, what I meant to say is…Sansa would rule,” Jon looked up to Gendry, then his eyes flitted to Arya. “She ruled for longer than I did in my absence.” Jon gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “You’re Ned Stark’s daughter. They have already accepted you. You are Queen in the North already without having been crowned.”

Sansa, who’d already been pale, seemed to lose what little color she had as she gaped at Jon. She shook her head once, but Jon nodded in earnest. Beside Gendry, Arya’s stance relaxed a bit and she nodded along with Jon.

“This is how it should be, Sansa,” Jon said, giving her a small smile. “You were meant to be queen. They love you.”

Davos, who had been sitting in silence, spoke up. “And what of the Seven Kingdoms, Your Grace?” The question was directed at Jon.

Jon looked up to Gendry, the small smile growing a bit. “I suppose I’ll accept my punish, Your Grace. It’s not something I wanted, but punishments never are, aye?”

Davos laughed quietly and Gendry released a long exhale. “I’ve never done something so underhanded in my life,” Gendry admitted.

Arya grinned at him. “First, you get yourself named king; then you plot against the Unsullied to not only keep Jon alive and put him in power; and _then_, you weasel out of ruling yourself. Not bad for your first act as king.”

“And what if the Unsullied decide to come back?” Davos asked, his eyes shifting between Gendry and Jon.

Jon sat up straighter in his chair. “If they come back, then they will have to deal with the new ruler of the Seven Kingdoms. I won’t allow anymore unnecessary bloodshed in Westeros.”

“And if that happens,” Sansa said, “you will have the support of the North. I will always have your back, Jon.”

“And what about you?” Arya asked him quietly, her eyes searching his face.

“I’ll go on to Storm’s End,” he told her. “Make sure that the Stormlands know who I support.”

But of course, Davos and Brienne were also from the Stormlands, so he knew he’d have good company in his show of support for Jon, or Aegon, or whatever he was to be called.

After a while, Jon was led back to his rooms in order to keep up the pretense that he was being kept against his will. Sansa retired shortly afterward, claiming exhaustion. Davos excused himself as well, giving Gendry a smirk when he saw that Arya had made no move to leave. When they were alone, they both undressed a crawled into his bed, Gendry’s arms coming around her as she nuzzled into his neck. They were too tired for much more than that.

“Your sister,” he said sleepily. “She’s pregnant?”

“Yes,” Arya said. “It’s not a bastard. She and Sandor Clegane were married before we left.”

“Lady Sansa and the Hound? Lady Sansa is having the Hound’s baby??”

Arya slapped at his chest. “He isn’t the Hound. His name is Sandor.” A pause, and then more quietly, she said, “_Was_.”

Gendry wondered to himself what it would mean for the Queen in the North to birth a baby with no father. Would the Northerners take her at her word that she was married to Clegane, or would they see her child as a bastard? Before he could think on it too deeply, sleep claimed him. He slept peacefully until morning, Arya wrapped in his arms the whole night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I have a lot to say...
> 
> 1) I'm really sorry that this took so long. I was wrestling with the last few chapters and what it turned into. As y'all know, this was meant to be STRICTLY a "missing scene" type situation which stuck to TV canon.
> 
> Obviously, I have failed miserably at that...which brings up to #2.
> 
> 2) I'm really sorry that this did NOT play out how I originally intended, but the story took on a life of its own. I tried, TRIED REALLY HARD, to accept the TV canon and just work around it and behind the scenes. I just wasn't able to do it. For one thing, I couldn't accept that Gendry's Targaryen heritage and his distant relationship to Jon and Daenerys was just ignored. Like...why?!?! I just couldn't leave it alone. The second thing I couldn't stomach was Bran becoming king the way he did...now maybe if there is ever an end to ASOIAF Bran will be king and maybe he'll get there in a much more satisfying way, but I just couldn't...so as you can see, I ignored it. Didn't even address it. I apologize because I know that's not what I initially promised, but...I couldn't physically bring myself to write a scene in which Bran is selected as King.
> 
> 3) I feel almost like my method of sneaking Jon back onto the throne is part of a crack fic, but given the material I have, I wasn't sure how else to do it without writing a completely new story. I feel he is more qualified than Gendry or Bran to sit on the throne, PLUS he's actually the rightful ruler. So it is what it is. ALL HAIL KING AEGON, SIXTH OF HIS NAME, amirite??
> 
> 4) There is another major plot point that's going to be different that I'll apologize for later because it's going to be addressed in the next chapter. It's another one of those things I couldn't leave alone. A
> 
> All in all, I'm okay with how the story turned out, even if I technically failed at what I started out trying to do. Just shows that stories are going to do their own thing. This story is nearing its end, but there are still a couple more surprises that I hope will make up for me completely going off the rails here.
> 
> Thank y'all SO MUCH for reading this.


	16. Sansa V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I just can't leave well enough alone....

-Sansa-

Sansa was exhausted. A week after the ordeal in the dragon pit, she was as tired as she’d ever been. Every part of her body, inside and out, was weary and she longed for her bed back in Winterfell. She knew the trip back to Winterfell was likely to feel longer than the trip down to King’s Landing had. The stress of worrying about Jon and Arya, the subsequent turn of events that led to Gendry Baratheon being named ruler, and then the clever abdication by the new lord had taken its toll. There had not been much argument about Gendry’s decision once the initial bickering had died down. As Sansa had pointed out, Yara Greyjoy had very little say in what decisions were made for Westeros. The Iron Born had set sail for their newly recognized kingdom two days’ prior; since then, Gendry had promptly stepped down, but not before championing Jon.

There were some lords who were unhappy with the decision. Jon had murdered the previous ruler, however short her rule might have been, and there was some argument to be made that this was not a good way to start a rule. But Sansa had summarily shut them down by arguing that Daenerys’s start had been much worse. There were plenty who had killed for a chance to sit on the Iron Throne and plenty who had bled as a result.

Robert Baratheon crushed Rhaegar Targaryen’s chest with a war hammer. Rhaegar was the Crowned Prince at the time, the heir to the Seven Kingdoms, and yet Robert was allowed to ascend the throne. Daenerys had killed Cersei, as well as thousands of others, because she wanted to reclaim what had truly never been hers. Sansa knew there were people that were opposed to Jon’s rule, but it seemed far more people accepted it.

And it was not Jon’s Targaryen claim that lended the most credence to his ascension as King of the Seven Kingdoms. Jon was the rightful ruler, though there were those who would probably still argue this fact, but it was not being Rhaegar’s son that helped him in the eyes of the other lords. Jon’s reign as King in the North and Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch perhaps helped him as much as his blood ties. Though both previous titles were short-lived, Sansa knew that his accomplishments and his reputation spoke for themselves and she had faith that his reign as king would be much longer.

Many people had argued in his favor. Samwell Tarly spoke at length about Jon’s honor, about his need to do what was right, about his ability to make people listen and follow him. He spoke about Jon’s insistence that the Wildings be allowed south of the Wall so that they did not become members of the Night King’s army. Sam painted a picture of a man who truly cared about the well-being of all people, not just lords and ladies. He acknowledged that Jon _hated_ being in charge, though he was quite good at it. He spoke of Stannis Baratheon’s admiration for the former Lord Commander.

Davos had backed up Sam’s testament regarding Stannis. Davos had also come to quickly admire the young Night’s Watchman. He insisted that Jon was not a murderer and he felt that most of the other lords likely believed that Jon was justified in getting rid of Daenerys. He said that though Jon Snow was honest to a fault, that this should be something more people strived for. 

Sansa, too, had argued in favor of her brother. She never mentioned the fact that Jon Snow had a right to the throne through his birth. After all, Jon would never be Aegon Targaryen to her. Instead, she spoke of her brother, a brother who she had mistreated as a child. She spoke of how despite their past, Jon had welcomed her with open arms when she had arrived at Castle Black after fleeing Ramsay. She told everyone of how Jon had dug in his heels at the thought of fighting Ramsay Bolton. Jon didn’t want to fight, Jon hated killing, but he’d done it anyway. She spoke of how her brother had gone to battle against a much larger army. She conceded that, yes, he may have lost had it not been for the Knights of the Vale, but that he was unable to adequately plan due to her own failure to tell him that the Vale was willing to fight for the Starks. Jon had known the odds of defeating Ramsay on his own were slim, yet he had done it for the honor of his family. She spoke of how he had not wanted to be named King of the North, but had accepted it anyway, and had served its people to the best of his ability, only giving up his title when he thought he had found a more worthy ruler to kneel to.

Reflecting on it afterward, Sansa still found that some of his decisions made her angry, and she told him so after the matter had been settled. He had given her one of his sad smiles and hugged her tight.

“If only I could keep you here to advise me,” he had japed. “But the North needs their queen.”

Sansa had not thought it through, so focused had she been on making sure Jon stayed alive, but she should have anticipated this turn of events. Unlike Jon, she was more than happy to take on the mantle of Queen of the North. She knew that she was capable and she trusted her instincts. Bran might have been named as King after Sansa had insisted on Northern independence, but he had quietly assured her that he was still not fit for rule after Jon had declared that Sansa should be queen.

Her coronation would not take place for several months yet as she had insisted that Jon be the one to crown her and he had his own battles to fight in the capital.

Now, just a few days before her scheduled departure, Sansa once again sat in the quiet of the Godswood, absently stroking her swollen belly. She wanted to be happy, truly she did, but she couldn’t shake her melancholy. She was glad to be carrying a child that she could love and who would one day be able to carry on the Stark name considering that she was uncertain if she would ever be able to wed again. Had Sandor not left her with a child, she would have had to marry someone to insure her line carried on as Arya and Bran would provide no heirs. 

She had wanted to be queen when she was a child and now that her dream had been realized, she had hoped that she would be happier. But the fact that she would be returning home without two of her siblings weighed heavily on her. Bran, of course, would always be there. He was so closely tied to the Weirwoods that she imagined he would continue his quiet contemplations in the Godswood once they returned home. He would never truly be Bran again though. Sansa understood that much of her dismal mood was a result of the loneliness she already felt.

Arya had secured a ship and a crew already with plans of sailing west past the Sunset Sea. Jon would rule in King’s Landing and she may go years without seeing either of them. She was glad that they were all alive and free, but a part of her felt like returning home to a Winterfell absent of her siblings would be a slow torture. She tried to cheer herself up with thoughts about what the future held in relation to her child. She loved children and she was certain that becoming a mother would bring her plenty of joy.

But then the thought of whose child she carried would cloak her like a storm cloud and she would have moments when she would wonder how she would ever survive the pain. It clenched around her heart like a fist and she would find herself breathless with grief. Would she have felt differently if she had never loved him? Would it be easier to let him go if she had never known how it felt to lie in his arms? She wondered what he would have been like as a father. He likely never thought to have children. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it might have been like had he never left Winterfell.

He might be scared to touch her at first when he found out she was pregnant. He might be frightened that he would be no good as a father. But then he would warm to the idea. His hands were so large that Sansa imagined their little baby would seemingly disappear as he held it in his huge paws. She could see it so clearly in her mind – the way his grey eyes would soften when he looked at his child, the small pull of his lips into a smile, how he might try to gentle his voice when speaking.

A sob shook her chest and she covered her mouth to stifle the sound that threatened to escape from her lips. Her eyes squeezed shut and she felt hot tears gather in her lashes and then spill down her cheeks to drip off her chin. She wiped at them furiously just as she heard footsteps coming up the path quickly. She turned to find Arya, which was strange since normally Arya moved as quietly as a ghost. 

Sansa stood from the bench, still wiping at her eyes. She looked at Arya and realized her sister’s grey eyes were wide and bright and she looked…_excited_. Sansa couldn’t fathom what would have excited her sister. 

Arya’s brow furrowed as Sansa approached. “Are you all right?”

Sansa knew she must look a fright with her puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She nodded. “It’s fine. Is something the matter?”

Arya took a deep breath, then the corners of her mouth twitched into a grin before she shook it off. “Nothing’s the matter. I just need you to come with me to your chambers. It’s urgent.”

Arya spun on her heel and set off down the serpentine. Sansa groaned and made to follow her, though she had no hope of walking as quickly as Arya. Her sister had the advantage of not wearing heavy skirts _and_ not being pregnant. Several times, Arya turned around, looking a tad impatient, as she checked Sansa’s progress. For her part, Sansa moved as quickly as she could without risking a tumble.

The walk to her chambers was agonizingly long and Sansa could tell that Arya wanted to take off running, but was resisting for Sansa’s benefit.

“Is this about Jon?” Sansa demanded a bit breathlessly. “Has something happened? Arya!”

Her sister trudged onward, slowing down only to allow Sansa to gain some ground before hurrying away again. Finally, _finally_, the two of them reached Sansa’s door. Arya spun around before opening the door and gave her that strange smile again.

“Seven hells!” Sansa cursed uncharacteristically, then slapped a hand over her mouth out of habit. “What is it?!”

“Don’t swoon,” Arya said sternly, then threw open the door.

Sansa rolled her eyes and then stepped through and left Arya standing in the doorway. Sansa’s bed had been made and her uneaten breakfast had been removed. She was unsure what Arya was presenting to her until she caught movement in the corner of her eye from the small table and chair sitting against the darkened wall, furthest from the single window. 

He stood so quickly that the chair tumbled over and Sansa gasped so violently she nearly choked. He made it to her in three long strides and his muscled arms came around her in a crushing hug. 

“Don’t squeeze her so hard, you idiot,” Arya hissed from the doorway. “Her position is delicate.”

Sansa then heard the distinct click of the door closing and knew Arya had gone. Her shaking hands rose to wrap around his back and she pushed her face into his chest, breathing in his scent and praying that this was real and not some figment of her imagination that her exhausted mind had conjured.

“Little bird,” he rasped into her ear. When a sob tore free from her, he gently shushed her, dropping kisses onto her head.

“Please let this be real,” Sansa whispered brokenly, her face still buried in his chest, too scared to look up lest he fade away.

She felt the rumble of his short laugh in his chest and held him tighter. “It’s real, Sansa.”

She opened her eyes and pulled away from him slightly; tentatively, she looked up at his face, still half-expecting him to fade into nothing. “I thought that…Arya said…”

He nodded, looking grim. “She told me what she thought…what she told you. It was almost true.”

Sansa slid her hands from around his back. They continued to tremble as she moved them up his body until she cupped his face. Of course, she was curious to know what had happened, how he had survived, where he had been all this time, but those were secondary to her need to touch him. 

“Kiss me,” she whispered. “Please.”

She thought he might crush her to him, that he may be feeling as desperate as she was. Instead, he bent to her slowly, carefully brushing his lips against her own. It was so soft and sweet that Sansa whimpered into his mouth. His arms instinctively tightened, but then he loosened them again, likely scared he would crush her. He moved his hands from her back down to her hips, squeezing them through the material of her dress and drawing her ever closer to him. When they were flush against each other, he abruptly pulled back and looked down at her, puzzled.

Sansa didn’t know what she had done to confuse him, but her patience was wearing thin and she wanted him to kiss her again. She stood up on her toes to bring her face close to his, but he pulled away. Wounded, she pulled back to look into his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her face though. His eyes were trained on her belly. He had clearly felt the roundness of it when he had pressed Sansa closer to him. His eyes darted up to her face quickly, then back down.

Sansa couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her mouth when she realized he knew. She moved his left hand from her hip and laid it across the swell of her stomach. Sansa had felt flutters, but she knew it was still too early for anyone else to detect any movement. She could feel the warmth of his hand even through the material of her dress. _This is your papa_, she wanted to tell their baby.

Sandor watched his thumb as it rubbed back and forth over the material of Sansa’s dress.

“You weren’t careful,” he said, though it was more a statement than an accusation.

“No,” Sansa admitted. “I wasn’t careful. I wanted whatever you could give me.”

Sandor opened his mouth, likely to tell her it wasn’t much, but he stopped himself, seemingly unable to insult his baby just to insult himself. Instead, after a moment, he said, “How far along?”

“Around four months,” Sansa said, trying to estimate how long it had been since she had lain with him. “Perhaps closer to five months.”

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he rumbled, his brow furrowing in anger.

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Sansa agreed. “But you’re here now and I won’t dwell on it. Just…never leave me again?” Sansa had meant for it to be light and teasing, but it came out sounding a bit desperate.

“Never,” he growled, his hands moving up to her shoulders. They slid over to her neck and his fingers caressed her long throat as he looked down at her hungrily. 

Sansa went to her tiptoes, brushing light kisses against his mouth, but it seemed that Sandor was done with sweetness. His mouth crushed against her own, his tongue opening her lips and pushing into her mouth. Sansa made a little sound of pleasure that he answered with a growl, pressing his hips into hers, letting her feel how she affected him. 

“Sansa,” he said against her lips, sounding pained. Suddenly, Sansa was worried that he would try to stop out of some misconstrued idea that he might hurt her.

“Please don’t stop,” she said breathlessly, pushing back against his hips. “Please, please, please.” She said it between the little bites and nips she peppered on his lips. “I want you. I love you, please don’t stop.”

“Little bird,” he rasped, tearing at her bodice, his large clumsy fingers struggling with the laces. She backed away from him to rid herself of her dress and her boots and her chemise while Sandor quickly unlaced his breeches, apparently deciding not to worry with the rest of his clothes. He pulled her back to him and pushed her small clothes from her hips. He was breathless and when he looked up to meet her eyes, his own eyes were dark with desire, his pupils blown wide. His eyes roved over her entire form, from her face down to her breasts and lower. Sansa stood between his open legs, gripping his shoulders, wishing that he had gotten rid of his tunic. 

“This won’t hurt you?” There was a note of worry and desperation in his voice when he asked.

Sansa shook her head.

“You’ll stop me if something hurts?”

She nodded and he pulled her onto him, letting her set the pace as his hands explored her body. It was slow going because Sansa couldn’t stop kissing him. In turn, he kept talking to her, whispering things in her ear that she’d never thought he’d say:

“Gods, Sansa, I’m so sorry…”

“So beautiful.”

“I love you.”

“Forgive me.”

When they were done, Sandor lay curled completely curled around her, his arms wrapped around her waist and his face pressed into her neck. His fingers idly brushed against her belly, causing Sansa to twitch when it tickled. She smiled into the darkness as she thought about telling him one more thing he was unlikely to know.

“Sandor?”

“Hmm?” He mumbled, sounding half asleep.

“I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve heard, but many things have happened in the last few days.”

“Aye, I heard your brother is king now,” his warm breath tickled the skin of her neck and she squirmed a little. “Best be still, little bird, unless you want another round.”

“Anyway,” she said, making her lower body still so as not to distract her husband. “Yes, Jon is king. Have you not wondered who might rule in the North?”

Sandor was quiet for a few seconds. “Thought Jon would be king of it all with you as his wardeness.”

“Not quite.”

She felt him move behind her as he sat up. She could feel him look at her in the dark. “What do you mean ‘not quite’?”

She sat up with him, found his face with her hand, unable to stop the smile spreading on her lips though she knew he couldn’t see it. “Silly man. Is it not obvious? You are now husband to the Queen in the North.”

“Seven hells,” he groaned, and collapsed back on the bed. “How did I get myself into this?”

Sansa lay back down, snuggling against him. “If I remember correctly, I tricked you into it, ser.”

“Aye, you did,” he said, though there was no anger in his voice, only amusement and maybe wonder. “Suppose you get everything you want then? A kingdom and a dog?”

She slapped at his chest. “I get everything I want, it’s true. Northern independence, my remaining brothers and sister alive and safe, and the man I love in my bed. Maybe the Gods blessed me after all.”

She half-expected him to make some snide comment about gods and blessings and being the man she loved, but he’d already drifted to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sandor's POV will be next and it will explain what he's been up to...


	17. Sandor V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I didn't proofread this very thoroughly because I've had a ton going on...so any grammatical errors caught, please let me know. I will fix them. Going to try to look at it again later to clean it up, if needed.
> 
> Just an epilogue after this.
> 
> Also, Gendrya fans...do not freak out. This isn't over yet.
> 
> That is all. For now.

-Sandor-

Sandor wasn’t sure how long he slept, but it was late morning when he finally dragged himself from bed. Sansa was already awake, likely had been for hours, and was sitting at the table looking over some documents. She looked well-rested, as opposed to how she’d looked last night when she’d entered her room. He knew she mustn’t have slept much over the last several weeks, if everything he’d heard had transpired was true. 

She smiled at him when he joined her at the table. He’d shed some of his clothes in the night, so he sat there wearing only his breeches. Sansa didn’t seem to mind, as her eyes were struggling to look anywhere but his chest.

“I can have someone bring food for you,” she said, and he nodded. He was staring, if he was honest. He watched as she stood from her chair and stuck her head out the door. Apparently, guards had been placed there at some point during the night because he could hear her conversing with someone.

She closed the door back once she was done and cradled her small belly in her hands as she walked back to him. He still couldn’t believe it. Sansa Stark was carrying his child. _Their_ child. He’d barely been able to keep his hands away from her belly since he’d gotten her naked. He wondered if it irritated her that he was so drawn to it. But he never thought to have children, certainly not with her. 

“What are we to name him?” He asked suddenly as she sat back down.

She lifted a brow in question. “What if it’s a girl?”

“Then, what are we to name her?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. There’s been so many other things on my mind, and while I’ve been very happy to know I’m to have a child, it’s also been quite…painful.”

Her eyes flickered from her stomach up to his face and he knew that he was the cause of that. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he told her. 

“I know. And it doesn’t matter now. But when I thought you’d…when I thought you were gone, it was hard. I have so many questions, but I don’t know where to begin.”

Sandor had known this part was coming. He would like to have told her that after he watched Arya walk out of that map room that he’d followed shortly after, deciding to leave his brother to his fate. But he hadn’t. He’d made a terrible mistake and he’d know it with every step he took up those steps. Sansa was waiting on him expectantly, studying his face as he tried to find the words. When he began speaking, he didn’t stop for some time.

Sandor told Sansa of his vicious fight with Gregor, of finding out belatedly that the monster he was dueling was something different, something inhuman. Gregor had always been freakishly strong, it was true; but he felt pain. The Gregor that Sandor fought that day in the stairwell was not human. Sandor had come to the conclusion years ago that he had the ability to beat Gregor. Sandor was strong, though not as huge as Gregor; he was also very likely a superior swordsman. When Gregor was alive, he’d relied on his huge form and incredible strength to do much of the work for him, but he was a sloppy swordsman at times; Sandor was not sloppy – at least when he was sober. 

He explained to Sansa that he’d still had hope, even as he ascended the stairs, that he could beat Gregor. Everything had changed, however, when they crossed steel. Every blow that Sandor landed proved ineffective. Gregor felt no pain because he was no longer a man. Sandor realized too late that Gregor wouldn’t die by steel. By the time Sandor realized that Gregor was unbeatable, it was too late. He certainly wouldn’t have run away, but he couldn’t have if he wanted to. 

He told Sansa how it had felt when his undead brother had dug his massive thumbs into his eye sockets – how he was sure that his eyeballs would explode. He told her how he’d stabbed Gregor in the face in a final effort to shake him off, but opened his blood-filled eyes only to find that Gregor was pulling the blade from his skull. There was no way to beat him.

In the second or two that passed after Sandor opened his eyes, several things became very clear to him: one was that Sandor refused to die only for Gregor to live another day to only bring torment; two was that the buggering dragon had set fire to the bailey below and Sandor could see the smoke rising up from the flames; and the third thing that was clear was that if fire didn’t kill Gregor, nothing would.

A good chunk of the wall behind Gregor was already gone, so without giving a thought to the fact that he was sealing his own fate, Sandor had pushed himself off the wall and launched himself at his brother, tackling him at the waist. Gregor, caught off guard due to the blade he’d just pulled from his skull, was knocked back violently, his own weight combined with Sandor’s sending him crashing through the stone wall.

But when the wall gave way and Gregor lost his footing, Sandor let go and dug in his heels, letting his upper body fall forward, his middle landing on the remaining stones as he watched Gregor plunge into the flames. He was bent forward for only a second before he threw himself backward again, more of the wall collapsing where he’d just vacated.

He hadn’t had time to contemplate what would’ve happened had Gregor grabbed him. Gregor hadn’t had time or the wherewithal to understand what was happening before it was all done. In the few seconds after Sandor jumped back from the crumbling wall, he realized he was likely going to die anyway. 

_At least not by fire_, he’d thought, staying close to the inner wall of the stairwell as the outer stones fell away. He picked his way through the rubble that had already fallen. The sun beamed down on him from above and the dragon screeched again and again. Sandor could see its shadow pass over him, blotting out the brilliant sunlight with its massive form and he kept thinking, _Not by fire_. 

He didn’t want to be crushed to death either, but it was the preferable of the two methods that seemed would cause his imminent death. He was hit repeatedly with falling debris. By the time he had reached what was left of the map room, the corridor from which he came was blocked. He had thought to escape through the tunnels that Arya had told him about, but if the ruins of the Keep were any indication, much of the castle had collapsed into the tunnels. Instead, he went left, taking a corridor that led further into the Keep. From the best he could tell, the outer walls were taking the most damage and if the bloody dragon would ever focus its attention elsewhere, Sandor might just be able to make it out of the Keep.

Thankfully, having spent years in service to the Lannisters and Robert Baratheon, Sandor was very familiar with the castle. It was fortunate that he remembered his way because his eyes were nearly useless. He could see shapes and shadows and light, but every time he tried to blink away the pain, blood seeped from beneath his lids like tears. His head was pounding, and one particular hit from a falling stone left him disoriented. 

The Keep was seemingly abandoned. All of Cersei’s people had clearly abandoned her when the dragon had appeared. He briefly wondered if he’d run into her again. What way had she gone in her attempted escape? What would he do if he came across her?

_I can still kill her_, he thought. Cersei had always been fond of him in a sickening sort of way. His talent for violence earned her admiration. And while Sandor was willing to let go of his own revenge, and had never been necessarily mistreated by the Queen, he would be hesitant to let her go, knowing what she’d done to the Stark girls. Yes, he’d gladly deliver Cersei Lannister’s cold, dead body to Arya and Sansa. 

As it was, he never came across Cersei. Never came across anyone.

“What about after you escaped the Keep?” Sansa asked him now. “Did you not try to find Arya or Jon?”

“The hit to the head was worse than I thought,” he admitted. “I got out and I was disoriented, didn’t know what I was doing. Walked right out the city gates and promptly collapsed. Don’t know how long I was out, likely only a few minutes. When I woke up, I was in a tent being treated by some young Northern lad. The dragon queen planned to speak to her armies at the Keep, but I’d just come from there and wasn’t interested in going back.”

“So you just left?” Sansa’s eyes were wide, her tone disbelieving. “I thought that you’d at least find Arya…”

“Aye, I would have, if I’d been thinking clearly. I was turned around too, not sure where I’d left Stranger…so I stole a horse and took to the road.”

“Why? You were injured, you could barely see! What if something had happened to you?”

He snorted as he watched the worry create creases in her forehead. She was frowning at him. He made her angry, evidently.

“All the danger was behind me, ‘least that’s how I saw it when I started up the Kingsroad,” he watched her face, confusion clearly writ on her features. “I was coming back to you, Sansa.”

She stilled completely, her mouth parted in surprise. She was perturbed that he took no time to rest, no time to find Arya, but the reasoning should have been simple. “You were on your way to Winterfell?”

He nodded his head. “By the time I made it to the crossroads, I could see I needed to rest. My wounds hadn’t properly healed, my eyes weren’t right…I stayed there for several weeks before taking off again. But then…”

“You must have gotten word that I had left the North,” Sansa guessed.

He nodded again. “Heard it at another inn. Stopped in for a hot meal and heard the little bird had flown south. So I turned around.”

Sansa let loose a breath and looked around as though she were trying to piece together the journey he’d taken. “You were on the road for _weeks_, headed north, and then you just turned around?”

Sandor stood from his chair and went around the little table, dropping into a squat in front of her. He reached for her hand, so small that it disappeared into his.

“I told your bloody sister that if I survived Gregor that there was no man who could stop me getting back to you.”

Sansa’s other hand slid atop his and she bent forward to place a gentle kiss on his mouth. “Leave it to Arya to extract the right promise from you. How did she find you anyway?”

“By chance. I rode back through the gates, made my way to the Red Keep, and she found me. She was helping hand out water to the smallfolk. Haven’t seen the wolf bitch that shocked in years. Went bug-eyed and tried to tackle me to the ground.”

“What?! Why did she try to tackle you?” Sansa’s look of indignation almost made him laugh. She looked like she was about to storm out and find her sister.

“It was a friendly tackle,” he explained. “Seemed she was glad I escaped death again.”

Sansa visibly relaxed. “I suppose she’s always been rather aggressive with her affection.”

A knock on the door cut short their conversation as breakfast was delivered. Throughout the rest of the day, Sansa made her plans to leave. Sandor mostly kept to their room, dozing intermittently in an attempt to catch up on his missed sleep. They were set to leave for the North in two days’ time, but not before Sansa saw Arya off on her voyage west. 

They dined with Arya that evening, her Baratheon lord curiously absent from her side for once. Sandor became aware that it was a little tense between the sisters and the reasoning eventually unfolded. Sansa seemed agitated throughout the whole meal, unable to sit still in her seat and constantly stealing glimpses of Arya, who was doing a commendable job of ignoring her sister.

Finally, Sansa said, “I just don’t understand.”

Arya didn’t flinch, but rather finished chewing her food, took a sip of wine from her cup, and finally looked at her sister. “Which part?” She asked flatly.

Sansa wrung her hands anxiously. “All of it? Why are you sailing west _now_? Do you not think Jon and I need you? Why are you so resistant still to marriage when you clearly love Lord Baratheon? Why are you disappearing on all of us so soon after we’ve found one another?”

With a heavily exaggerated sigh, Arya pushed back from the table a bit and pinned Sansa with a stare. “I’m doing what I _want_ to do, for once…”

Sansa cut her off, “When have you ever _not_ done what you want?”

Arya glared across the table and Sansa matched the glare rather admirably. Sandor cleared his throat and made to get up, but Sansa’s hand landed on his arm. “You aren’t going anywhere,” she said to him.

Sandor grumbled and sat back down, not at all thrilled with the prospect of hearing an argument. He sipped out of the cup full of watered wine and wished desperately that he had some undiluted Dornish sour to help get him through the imminent drama that was sure to occur. 

“Sansa,” Arya said with deadly calm, “I’ve spent years just _surviving_. I’d like to live while I still have the chance.”

Sandor acknowledged that it was a good argument; one Sansa should be able to understand. His eyes slid to his wife, still twisting her hands together beneath the table. 

“Are you so eager to be rid of Jon and myself?”

“No, that’s not it. But the two of you have kingdoms to rule. I have no interest in that. It’s truly, very simple, Sansa. I want to see what’s west and I’m going to. I have the means, I have maps; what I lack in knowledge I make up for in curiosity,” her eyes softened a bit. “I won’t be gone forever.”

“What about Lord Baratheon?” Sansa asked.

Arya said nothing for several seconds, her eyes apparently blank of all emotion. “What about him?”

“Arya, I think…I think he loves you. I think the two of you could be happy.”

“I _am_ happy, Sansa. I may not show it in the same ways that you would, but for the first time in years, I can be happy.”

“I’m just…I’m going to miss you.”

“I know,” Arya said, a small smirk forming on her lips. “I’ll miss you as well, but it’s not forever. One thing about us Starks, we always find the way home.”

Sansa let it drop after that, though Sandor could tell she wanted to say more, perhaps beg Arya not to leave. He knew that, although she was taking him home to Winterfell, that she would still be leaving part of her heart behind when she rode North without Jon and Arya. She said nothing else on the subject though, and the next morning they both dressed early to see Arya off.

“I still say that Jon could use her here,” Sansa said quietly when they arrived at the boat dock.

“Doing what? Advising him on how to spend the Crown’s coin?” Sandor snorted. “The she-wolf isn’t meant for the small council, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“He still has several spots to fill,” Sansa pointed out.

Sandor hadn’t given much thought to the Small Council, but was admittedly a little curious to who had already been selected to fill the seats. He wasn’t going to ask her though, unwilling to let her think he actually gave a shit about who the King put on his small council. Thankfully, she filled him in.

“He’s selected Tyrion as Hand of the King, naturally,” Sansa explained. “Tyrion is quite good at ruling and very intelligent…”

Sandor growled. Sansa may have chosen him, but he’d always hated the Imp, and any sweet words about the last Lannister from his wife’s mouth irked him. She smirked, as though she knew this was a sore point for him, and continued, “Davos has agreed to be the Master of Ships. And it seems that Bran won’t be coming back to Winterfell after all,” she gave him a sad smile. “Jon asked him to be the Master of Whispers and he accepted.”

“So who does that leave?”

Sansa thought for a moment. “I believe that Jon will try to convince Samwell Tarly to be his Master of Coin. Lord Tarly is intelligent as well, but he had hoped to go home to Horn Hill to claim his seat. I imagine he will take Jon up on his offer though. There is no Master of Law or Master of War yet, nor has Jon selected a Kingsguard.”

Sandor had to hold back a laugh. “And you hoped that your wild sister could fill one of these roles?”

Sansa frowned and gave him a baleful look, clearly not pleased with his mockery. “For all I care, he could create a position for her, so long as it kept her here. If he asked her, she wouldn’t deny him.”

“Your brother won’t do that,” Sandor told her.

“I know,” she said, still a bit pouty. But then she caught sight of Arya, carrying a single bag over her shoulder, headed toward the docks. Jon and several Northmen were accompanying her. Behind them, Bran was being pushed by Podrick Payne, who was soon to be knighted by Brienne of Tarth. They all stopped as they came to stand in front of Sansa and Sandor, the Northmen hanging back a bit.

Sansa raised her brow at her brother, “Potential kingsguard?”

Jon looked back at the Northmen, who hadn’t taken their eyes off their former king. “Perhaps. Not that I’d want to take away any valuable bannermen, but they are some of the few men I’m comfortable with having my back.”

“The others being Wildlings?” Arya chimed in, grinning at him.

Jon grinned back and gave a nod, “Aye, Wildlings.” Sandor watched his dark eyes turn sad as he regarded his little sister. “You’re going to take care of yourself, yes?”

Arya rolled her eyes. “I always have.”

Jon wrapped her in an embrace, his head falling atop her head where he placed a kiss. Beside Sandor, Sansa was sniffling, furiously wiping at her eyes with a worn piece of cloth she’d pulled from her sleeve. Unsure what to do, Sandor awkwardly patted his wife’s back as she cried, which seemed to be the appropriate thing to do as some of the tension in her body relaxed.

Arya let go of her brother and eyed him, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Proceed with caution, she-wolf,” he growled softly, which made her smirk at him.

“I won’t hug you,” she said finally. Then, she held out her tiny hand. Sandor shook it, feeling like he was making some sort of deal with a small child. He watched as Arya finally turned to her sister, a flash of sadness appearing in her own eyes.

“It will be fine, Sansa,” she said, more gently than Sandor had believed her capable.

“You can’t know that,” Sansa cried, dabbing at her eyes and nose.

“Might be I can’t,” she admitted, giving her sister a sad smile. “But if Clegane can continually find his way back to you, I think I can as well.” Then she wrapped her little arms around Sansa’s waist and Sansa wrapped her around Arya’s back. “It’s not forever. I promise.”

Within a few minutes, Arya boarded her vessel, her crew already on board and ready to set sail, as her family watched the waves carry her away.


	18. Epilogue:  Arya/Sansa

-Arya-

Arya closed her eyes as she took in the briny smell of the water as the ship moved out of the bay and into the waters of the Narrow Sea. It would be a long journey, but thankfully there were plenty of ports along the way to resupply her ship before heading out into the Sunset Sea. She had contemplated sailing out of Lannisport, but the crew and captain she had acquired were predominantly from King’s Landing and hadn’t wanted to spend weeks crossing land when they could be on the water. 

Arya had done her best to prepare for the journey, but the fact was that no maps existed of what lay across the Sunset Sea. She didn’t know what she would find or if she would even make it to land. For all she knew, she was sailing into an abyss or maybe sailing off the edge of the world. But she wasn’t frightened by the prospect of the unknown. She had seen enough horrors in her life that fear of the unknown was not one of the things she worried about.

When she reopened her eyes, she noted that dusk was approaching. The setting sun painted the dark waters in shades of deep orange and blood red. She could hear the sounds of her crew behind her, making bawdy jokes, already comfortable enough with her presence that they had no use holding their tongues around her. The scuffing sound of boots making their way across the deck and toward her caught her attention, but she didn’t turn.

Tentatively, his arms came around her middle and she leaned back into him to show it was alright to touch her. The last few days he had been approaching her like she was a frightened animal and he was scared she would run off. His chin dropped on top of her head and she felt a bit of the tension leave his body as he let loose an exhale.

Arya laid her hands atop his on her stomach, showing him she didn’t want him to move any time soon. At any other time, Arya could have stood in silence for hours, comfortable with the lack of conversation. But Gendry always brought out a different side of her, and this time it was uncertainty, which she hated. She chewed on her lip, an old habit from childhood which she thought she’d left behind in Braavos.

“You’re sure this is what you want?” Her own voice surprised her – quiet, unsure, a bit pathetic-sounding, if she was honest.

He chuckled into her hair. “What a stupid question,” he said. 

“You’ve left behind a lordship,” she paused, “And before that, a kingdom.”

“We both know that I wasn’t fit to be king, or lord either.”

She turned in his arms and he stood up straighter, looking down at her in confusion. She imagined that her expression matched his. She’d known he was on the boat, of course, but they hadn’t had a detailed conversation of just how Gendry had come to the decision to leave it all behind. He was quiet, seemingly waiting on her to elaborate, but Arya didn’t have the words just yet to ask him the questions that were gnawing at her. They stared at each other expectantly, but Arya knew she’d win out. She could go hours without talking, while Gendry tended to have a need to say what was on his mind. 

A look of exasperation flitted across his features and Arya suppressed a smirk as he finally cracked. “If you’re asking if I regret it, the answer is no.”

“Your entire life,” she said quietly, “you’ve had to fight to stay alive. You rarely knew where your next meal was coming from. You’re raised to lordship and within a few months, you leave it. How can you let go of the first secure thing in your life?”

“I didn’t want to be a lord to feel more secure, Arya. You know that,” his blue eyes moved from her face to look out over the water. “A lordship was a means to an end, but my plan failed. I have no need of it now.”

Arya knew he had laid it all out for her before now, but it was still difficult to believe that _she_ was his primary motivation for the things he’d done. Arya remembered that before she’d left Winterfell, she had gone to visit Sansa in her solar. The door adjoining the solar to Sansa’s private room was open and they could hear the maids gossiping. Sansa had snickered when the maids had begun commenting on the new Lord Baratheon.

_“So handsome.”_

_“Have you seen his eyes? Blue as the sky.”_

_“Tall, well-built….”_

The girls had sighed and giggled as they shared their opinion on the newly-made lord and Arya’s mood had grown sour. She wanted to storm into the room and tell them he was more than a pretty face. He was kind, and protective, and fiercely loyal. 

Now, she found herself thinking the same things those girls had been speaking about. Gendry _was _very handsome. She’d always known it objectively, but she hadn’t developed feelings for him because of how handsome he was. But now, staring up into those startling blue eyes, her fingers itching to trace his strong jawline, she wondered what he saw in her. 

She had accepted long ago that she would never be as beautiful as Sansa – had even accepted that she was plain at best, and though she’d been told numerous times since then that she was quite pretty, she never really felt it. But Gendry had called her beautiful. Aside from her looks, Arya knew she’d always been difficult. As a child, her temper and impulsivity had gotten her into trouble from the time she could walk and talk. Then, after she’d spent her time at the House of Black and White, she realized that some parts of her had died along with her parents and her brothers. 

She had come back colder, more distant, not near as sociable as she’d been as a child. She was unable to decide if she’d changed for better or worse. It seemed that she just shifted from one kind of difficult to another.

But Gendry had known both versions of her, had loved both versions of her to hear him tell it. In her darker moment, she had thought that maybe a better fit for Gendry would have been Sansa. They certainly would have made beautiful children. And when Gendry became a lord and it still looked as though the North may not gain its independence, it had even occurred to Arya that Gendry and Sansa might make a good marriage match. She had tried to be logical about it, but it had only made her inexplicably angry at both Sansa and Gendry, though she should have been angry at herself.

“What if I can’t make you happy?” Arya asked, her voice barely audible. But Gendry had been studying her face, watching her lips, and whether or not he heard her or read her lips, she wasn’t sure – but he knew what she’d said. And he laughed.

His arms squeezed her to him more tightly and he pressed a kiss against her forehead. She tried to ignore the big, stupid smile on his face that indicated he thought she was being ridiculous. “Don’t be so stupid,” he teased, throwing words at her that she might have said to him. “You make me happy all the time. Well, most of the time… I wasn’t happy when you left Winterfell without saying good-bye. You make me really happy when you pout like a child because you feel vulnerable when there’s no reason for it.”

“Shut up,” she hissed, wriggling out of his arms. She stomped on his foot, lightly kicked him in the shin, and jumped back while he bent over to rub at his sore leg.

“Best be nice to me,” Gendry said, smiling through a wince as he stood back up. He’d likely have a bruise on his shin. “I was a lord for a while, you know. I’ve grown used to being treated more gently.”

Arya rolled her eyes and snorted. “You’re traveling with the wrong woman if you want gentle.”

“Lady Stark,” Gendry said, something sparking in his eyes as he stepped close to her again, towering over her. She didn’t move back, but tilted her chin up to look at him. “Are you saying you like things rough?”

Arya lost the struggle to keep the smirk from her lips. “Might be.”

His hands fell to her hips, pulling her flush against him as he dipped down to graze his lips against hers. “Keep up this kind of talk and I’ll have to get the captain to marry us now.”

She swatted at his chest, but it was half-hearted. His breath ghosting against her lips was making her weak and rather than fight it, she closed her eyes and tilted her face up. “You’re such an idiot,” she murmured just before he kissed her properly.

~*~*~

Sansa sat watching Jon as they shared their last meal before she headed back to Winterfell. He looked much like he had whenever he had taken on a responsibility he didn’t want. His elbows were propped on the arms of the chair, his head dropped as he squeezed at the bridge of his nose. Davos was standing to Jon’s left, looking at least somewhat regretful for delivering the news.

“And he’s left no one in charge of Storm’s End?” Jon asked, not looking up at Davos.

“Uh, no,” Davos answered, wincing a little as Jon groaned. “There’s a castellan who’s been handling minor matters in Lord Baratheon’s absence, but he has not appointed anyone to replace him.”

“Not a very good lord,” Jon commented, finally looking up, his eyes meeting Sansa’s.

She couldn’t help herself. She was smiling brightly and it appeared that this annoyed her brother. Bran had informed them a few minutes earlier that Gendry Baratheon was gone, had taken leave of Westeros for an indeterminable amount of time. Alarmed, Jon had summoned Davos, who had confirmed it. 

“He’s with Arya,” Bran said needlessly. Sansa had already figured out that part and she was certain Jon had as well.

“She-wolves are more appealing than empty castles,” Sandor commented in a bored tone from Sansa’s left.

Jon rolled his head to look at Davos, a pained look on his face. “Did he tell you he would be with her?”

Davos nodded. “Aye, he told me he was sailing with Lady Arya. Wanted me to keep my mouth shut until they’d set sail.”

“And Arya…does she know he’s on the boat?”

Davos nodded again. “Lord Baratheon discussed it with her some days ago and she agreed. He told me if she didn’t want to be a lady, then he didn’t want to be a lord and that was that.”

“He asked her wrong the first time,” Bran said flatly. “He’s going to do it right this time.”

“So romantic,” Sansa commented, still smiling stupidly as she thought about how Arya’s life had somehow turned into the songs she always hated.

Her husband snorted and made some derogatory remark about what he thought of songs, but Sansa ignored him. Jon was still looking between Bran and Davos as though they had ruined his day with their news.

“I don’t think it requires immediate attention, Your Grace,” Sansa said, drawing his attention by using a title she knew he hated. Her brother shot her a withering look. “You have plenty of other tasks that need to be looked after and I imagine that the castellan can handle things for a while,” Sansa turned to look at Davos. “Would you agree, Ser?”

“I would, Your Grace. Storm’s End is secure for now. Lord Gendry mentioned that there may be a girl in the Vale…”

“I doubt Mya Stone would want to leave the Vale to become the lady of Storm’s End,” Sansa said. “But at least it’s a start.”

Jon gave a nod and then looked back to Sansa, changing the subject, “When would you like your coronation to be held?”

“After the baby is born,” Sansa said. Jon had been stunned to learn of her pregnancy, but seemed genuinely happy. “Perhaps in six or seven months? I want you to be the one to crown me, Jon, so if you feel six months is too soon for you to leave the capitol…”

Jon shook his head. “It should be fine. I’m told a tour of the kingdoms would be helpful to my reign, so I may start it in the North and go from there.”

After dinner, Sansa and Sandor stood to leave. Bran was wheeled away back to his room. He’d decided to stay in King’s Landing to become the Master of Whispers, so he would not be traveling with her tomorrow. Sansa embraced her brother, realizing how much she was going to miss him when she left. But she was also so thankful that he was alive. 

“I need to thank you, Sansa,” Jon said as he pulled away from her.

She stared at him in confusion. “For what?”

A light danced behind his eyes that she thought had died and he gave her a crooked smirk. “For everything. Need I list every item?”

Sansa pulled a contemplative face and tapped her chin. “Now that you mention it…”

Jon laughed and the sound made her feel light, like she was a child again and for a moment, the weight was gone from her shoulders. She grinned at him as he said, “Holding the North for me. Ruling the North for me. Saving my life.”

“I didn’t save your life, Jon,” Sansa said seriously. She didn’t want to think about the fear she had felt not so long ago when she had to face the fact that her brother may be put to death. 

Jon squeezed her hand, nodding his head in earnest. “Aye, you did. I know I seem like a fool at times, but I’m at least partially aware of what you did to save my life. You brought it to everyone’s attention that Gendry was the heir after me. You must have known Gendry would never sentence me to death. Some good came from you learning to play the game.”

Sansa heaved a great sigh. “Well, I _didn’t_ know that Gendry was going to then abdicate. That was all his doing.”

“Clever for a bastard blacksmith that can’t read.”

“Very,” Sansa agreed. “But then, he can’t be too clever. He did just abscond with our terrifying little sister.”

“Dumber than he is brave,” Sandor commented from behind her.

Jon chuckled. “Running away with Arya may not be clever, but he’s survived her before. I can forgive him easily for the stunt that put me here. I didn’t want to rule, but I think I can accept my fate. Certainly can’t escape it.”

“You’re going to do amazing, Jon,” Sansa said truthfully. “Just…listen to Tyrion.” Sansa laughed at the look Jon gave her. “Forgive me, but you are still too trusting and too honest. Lord Tyrion should be the perfect balance.”

“I think I’ll tell him you so, though I don’t know if that’s an insult or a compliment.”

Sansa reached over and hugged her brother, pressing a kiss to his cheek as she pulled away. “I’m going to retire now. You’re seeing us off tomorrow, yes?”

“Of course.”

Sandor growled at the guard waiting for them at the door, muttering that he could protect his own wife, thank you very much. As they made their way back to their chambers, the subject of baby names came up again.

“Percy for a boy?” Sansa suggested.

“No.”

“What about Myranda for a girl?”

“After that slut in the Vale?”

“Sandor!” She admonished.

“No, I don’t like that one either.” He quipped.

“Florian?”

“Seven buggering hells…”

“Ohhhh, ARYA for a girl!”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“OH! Tyrion for a boy! He always did treat me kindly,” she teased. “And wouldn’t it be an honor to name our son after a man who has been Hand for two kings and one queen?”

“A mad, boy-king and a murderous queen…and your brother. No.”

She pouted up at him as they reached their room. “You’re discouraging all of my ideas.”

“Because they’re shit ideas,” he told her, eyes softening and somehow affectionate despite the harsh words. “Might be I should in charge of baby naming.”

“Fine. What’s your ideas then?”

“Hmm. I had a sister once. Elinor?”

Sansa smiled up at him. “I like Elinor. And for a boy?”

The corner of his mouth twitched into the smallest of smiles. “Eddard?”

She felt her lips stretch into an even bigger smile as she nodded, “Yes, I like it. Eddard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnd it's done!
> 
> I want to thank EVERYONE who has read and commented on this little project of mine. It may have gone off the path I originally intended, but I'm still proud I finished it. And please don't let me scatter-brained ways deter you from commenting. I love comments. I'm just shit at replying to them...


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